Jacqueline West Talks About "Water for Elephants" and Robert
In Water For Elephants, costume designer Jacqueline West helps Robert Pattinson, Reese Witherspoon and Christoph Waltz to recreate the whimsical glamour of 1930’s circus life. Jacqueline, a fashion designer by trade, got her start working with director Philip Kaufman on The Unbearable Lightness Of Being starring Daniel Day-Lewis. Since then she has gone on to design costumes for award winning films including The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button and League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen. We spoke to Jacqueline about what it was like to run away with the circus and design for the retro style of the era.
Real Style: What were the challenges creating circus and period costumes in Water For Elephants?
Jacqueline West: The main challenge was having to make it all. It just doesn’t exist in costume houses. The genuine articles just didn’t survive. I guess it was all the wear they got in real circuses. Near the end of the shoot though an old friend of mine from where I have a ranch in the Sierra Foothills visited me on set with a stash of maybe five perfectly preserved costumes she found in an old warehouse in Oakland. They were gorgeous. I bought them all and somehow managed to get them into the Weehawken parade scene.
Real Style: What was it like was it working with Reese Witherspoon and Robert Pattinson?
Jacqueline West: It was a treat working with them both. Reese was lovely, collaborative and game about wearing all the very slinky and revealing performance costumes and the very bare thirties gowns and had the perfect body to make them all look alluring. We watched thirties films together and she studied the film goddesses of the era and really got the body language down perfectly. She’s a fabulous actress. It’s wonderful working with good actors! Rob was wonderful. I’d only seen him as a very pale vampire. It was so much fun to see how manly and handsome and period he could become in thirties working class “Brother Can You Spare a Dime” roustabout clothes. He too is very serious about his acting and wore them so well and managed to be so of the period.
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