On the red carpet at the 62nd New York Film Festival’s North American premiere of Luca Guadignino’s Queer, adapted from William S. Burrough’s cult novel, fashion designer Jonathan Anderson spoke with The Queer Review about reuniting with the filmmaker following their collaboration on Challengers and his costume design inspirations for the 1950s Mexico City set feature.
“Luca is a very dear friend and I’ve worked for him for many years”, Anderson told The Queer Review. “We’d worked on Challengers and then we went into production on Queer, so it was quite nice to go from one thing to another. I wouldn’t do it for anyone else. It was different from doing sports on Challengers to this!’
“When I started working with Luca on it, I had the idea that each look had to be from the period and that it all could fit into one suitcase”, continued Anderson. “So everything was one individual look for each character, without making any duplicates. The idea was that you go from white to very dark brown at the end, nearly like heroin. Like drugs ultimately. Drugs and addiction.”
“I love Burroughs’ book”, Anderson shared. “I remember reading it when I was younger and I was always fascinated by the cover, which had a Baselitz painting on it. It’s a cult book and I think what is amazing about the film is that it’s a great romance. Everyone has been through that process in some sort of form. We’ve all been in that weird situation where you are in love with someone and you don’t know where it is. You don’t know where it goes, where it starts, or where it ends. I think anyone who watches the film will be able to relate to that kind of emotion.”
“I was quite nervous when I was first doing this because Daniel Craig has worked on such huge films”, Anderson revealed. “So I was like, ‘How are we going do this?’ What was amazing is Daniel’s knowledge of how he wants clothing to react. How he wanted the suit to be and how the shoe needed to be. It took me a long time to find the suit for him because I wanted an original suit from the period in linen. It was amazing watching him come to life in it. It was fascinating and I really enjoyed working with him. ”
“Me and Luca were obsessed with Drew Droege’s Chloë Sevigny videos and when Luca was working on the casting he told me that he was going to have him in the film and I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, amazing!’ With Drew’s character, John Dumé, I based it a lot of it on early George Platt Lynes images of Man Ray and people that he had shot in that period. There was an amazing image of Marcel Duchamp that I saw and thought, this is what Drew’s character should look like in the scene where he has the metal flowers.”
“A lot of it was based on historical images and early photography from the period”, Anderson shared about the inspiration for the film’s costumes more generally. “Aside from George Platt Lynes, I was looking at other queer painters and photographers of that moment like Paul Cadmus and PaJaMa crew.”
By James Kleinmann
Queer opens in New York and Los Angeles on November 27th, and in theaters everywhere on December 13th from A24.
