‘My daughter is my best production’: Costume Designer Jenny Beavan on awards, glory, and how it’s always good to be home.
Jenny Beavan is a legend. In the public arena, she’s known as the endlessly talented, three-times Oscar-winning Costume Designer, who famously wore a vegan leather jacket and black trousers to pick up her Mad Max: Fury Road award. Clips of the star-studded audience staring in shock went viral. Jenny’s first Oscar was for Merchant Ivory’s period classic, A Room With A View, so there was something especially exciting about a biker appearing on stage in front of the Academy. She has designed too many huge films to list, but if you haven’t heard her name, you’ve definitely seen her work. I’ll throw The King’s Speech, Sherlock Holmes and Cruella into the mix, so you get the picture.
As the mother of one of my closest friends, Caitlin, however, Jenny is a legend for different reasons. The ‘chief inmate’ of the Asylum, her South-East London home, should receive another OBE for her party-hosting skills. She never gets cross with us for posing with her plethora of BAFTAs and is known for her ever-generous open-door policy. I haven’t lived there – yet – but spent an inordinate amount of time whilst at university sleeping on her sofa. Once the Asylum beckons you in, it’s hard to find your way out. ‘Asylum means a place of refuge’, Jenny says, ‘not a place for lunatics’. I’m always hopeful that I’ll get to sit down and have a glass (bottle) of wine in Jenny’s company. There’s no better.
So I’m biased, extremely biased. But with my best journalist hat on, I pick up the phone and give her a ring. ‘Georgia, you really should listen to my Desert Island Discs’, Jenny tells me, ‘that’ll give you a huge amount’. For someone who is much more comfortable behind the camera, telling the stories of others through fabric, texture and technique, I realise how disconcerting it must be staring down the barrel of the lens herself. Despite this, I’m sure part of what makes her so wonderful at her job is her warmth and openness, coaxing the likes of Charlize Theron, Tom Hardy, Colin Firth and Emma Stone into her designs. So she does me a favour and pulls the ripcord again.
‘I loved theatre, and had a grandfather who gave us sixpence if we could tell him where a quote from Shakespeare came from. He took me to see my first Shakespeare - Twelfth Night at the Aldwych – and I just fell in love with the whole idea. I thought, that’s where I want to be’. After studying Set Design at Central Saint Martin’s, Jenny’s segue into costumes was via a childhood friend, Nick Young, who hooked her up with Merchant Ivory’s 1978 TV movie, Hullaballoo Over Georgie and Bonnie’s Pictures, starring Dame Peggy Ashcroft.
‘By this time I was working in opera, ballet, theatre, I mean both designing and doing anything really. I made props, I made costumes, I painted scenery. Anyway, off I went to see Dame Peggy. There was no money involved, so it was what was in her wardrobe and mine to create this character for her. The second visit she said ‘my dear, we’re getting on quite well. I’ve never been to India before and I’m a bit nervous. And they’ve given me a First Class ticket. If I change it for two Economies, will you come with me?’ So off I went!’
I find it endlessly entertaining how often people at the height of their professions don’t recognise their own talent; success comes naturally, so why would they notice it. Jenny is no different, brushing off my attempts at getting her to blow her own trumpet: ‘Oh, it was much easier in those days. Don’t ask me why, but it was.’ I wonder if she was nervous when she was given her first Merchant Ivory designing job on The Bostonians in 1984. Did it feel like an exciting, yet intimidating promotion? ‘No. It was a sideways moment. I’d designed Carmen – full sets and 400 costumes – at Covent Garden when I was 21, and in a way, all the films are on that scale’. The word count won’t allow for the heady tale of how that came to pass, but it involves a Welsh theatre company in Splott, a conductor named Sir Georg Solti and a return flight to Frankfurt. It’s hard to keep up with Jenny’s Rolodex memory.
‘I can’t remember the name of the person I met yesterday, Rolodex I wish! But I think you do remember the past far more easily. When I did Desert Island Discs, it was funny talking about my parents. Suddenly I was transported back – I must have only been about 5 – to sitting on a chair swinging my legs, at the end of a rehearsal to the St Matthew Passion, in a big, dark, slightly churchy room. Probably in the Royal College of Music, watching my parents wrap their instruments. And I’d completely forgotten until that moment. But I think you can recall the past quite easily if you take yourself back there. It’s like watching a film.’
Her parents were musicians and Jenny credits her mother with cultivating her artistic flair; ‘she sent us to a sort of rather strange music and movement class’. Jenny and her sister were also granted the gift of a wall to draw on at home, the stuff of my childhood dreams. This bohemian, London upbringing stood her in good stead for a career in an industry which often defies societal norms by keeping you away from home for great swathes of time. Whenever Jenny has been off on location – the longest being nearly a year in both Australia and Namibia for Mad Max: Fury Road - I’ve always been envious of Caitlin’s trips out to visit her. But how did she manage when Caitlin was small?
‘I had a full-time, live-in nanny from when she was 8 months old. Su, or Du - Caitlin couldn’t say her s’s when she was little - is still a really good family friend. They came with me everywhere. I used to put Caitlin into the international schools, and then when she was about 6 she said ‘I just don’t want to go to strange schools anymore, I want to stay at home with my friends’. And I said ok, I get it. And luckily, a couple of films came up that were England-based. That was the time of Remains of the Day and Howard’s End. So we made it work.’
‘Making it work’, is something of a mantra for Jenny. Her next Oscar outfit, should she need one, will be a similarly recycled homage to the project she has worked on. She won’t be spending money on something new, and believes passionately in doing all she can for the environment. ‘What is the point of someone who looks like me – short, fat and Welsh – trying to put on a bloody gown, which I’ll only trip over. I cannot wear heels, I’ve got very bad feet, so I have to wear trainers or something of that ilk, like brogues. They can be shiny ones.’
She leaves me with this thought: ‘You just have to try in every way to do what you can, both in your personal life and in work, and not be overwhelmed. Otherwise it’s all too big. I was taught a long time ago by the wonderful Stephen Miles - a fantastic friend and very, very fine maker - to do things in bite-size chunks. Be that organising your chest of drawers in your bedroom, or approaching a film when it’s huge: do it in bite-size chunks. Work your way through and just keep going, but in small increments so you don’t get phased by it.’
It’s hard to imagine Jenny being phased by anything. She can’t say which project is coming next until the deal is officially closed, but at the moment, she’s loving being at the Asylum and seeing all her family and friends. Before signing off, Jenny invites me round for a drink. She doesn’t have to ask twice.
January, 2024
