Style Observer (SO): What made
The Book of Clarence a special project for you?

Antoinette Messam (AM):
The Book of Clarence was a special project for several reasons. I was honoured to be requested by director Jeymes Samuels. I am so incredibly excited to be working with this visionary director for the second time. I knew that I would be challenged creatively, and that scared and excited me at the same time. But the opportunity to work with so many iconic character actors was a costume designer’s dream. Let the collaborations begin! The icing on the cake was that I would prep and shoot this movie in Italy. This would be my first time working in person with some of the world’s oldest and most iconic costume rental houses. Touching the costumes myself from the famous rental houses of Peruzzi and Tirelli was a check on my bucket list. You couldn’t get better inspiration than being that close to the source of some of the most beautiful costumes built from my favourite films.

SO:What were the biggest challenges?

AM: My biggest challenge was the amount of prep time we had before we went to camera. Our schedule was incredibly tight because of our actors’ availability; some could not arrive in Madera, Italy, until the ninth hour. I had to rely on my gut instincts, the support of the costume community who have worked with these actors to provide sizes and helpful notes, and my fabulously talented craft costumers. I would not have been able to deliver some of my best work without our sewing shop and ager dyers’ support of my designs. Another challenge was our shooting location: Matera, Italy.

As beautiful and inspirational as it was visually, the downside was it did not have the resources we needed to make the costumes on short notice. Almost everything had to be brought in from Rome, Spain and the UK.

Then, how do I make this biblical movie different from the iconic films of that period that were done in the past…That was the ultimate challenge!

SO: What was your collaboration process with the directors and other departments heads?

AM: Director Jeymes Samuels gave few visual references, but the ones he did were the costume department’s anchor. They are what I and the other creative heads of department use to build the look of the film and design key pieces that organically describe the look of the character. There were some key movies as well that were very helpful in understanding the film’s tone. They were inspirational and helped me to see what inspired him. I then took these references and came back with ideas that we drew from to create the characters and sometimes the frame because so many scenes involved a large ensemble cast with even larger background performers.

SO: How did you establish the style of the film?

AM: I established the style of the film by first discussing with my director, Jeymes, what he did and did not like about the film references of the same period. We agreed on paring back on all the “trim”. My mantra for this film was “Less is more.” Stripping away the “haberdashery” (notions/trims) would streamline the looks, and then I could use accessories as markers for growth in wealth and stature.

SO: What was your research process for
The Book of Clarence?

AM: The costume department had an incredibly short prep time for a period film of this size. I was fortunate to have a lot of help with research, especially as the film had so many specific themes. Aside from my research, I hired Western Costume research department to help, specifically the Roman soldiers and their ranks. Once I started prepping in Italy, I had my ACDs, junior design assistants, and crowd supervisor helping to research different subjects specific to what we prioritised. We researched as we prepped and built the costumes, guerrilla-style but a lot of fun.

SO: How does
The Book of Clarence differ from
Lift?

AM:
The Book of Clarence, a biblical film, was different because the cast was primarily composed of people of colour. It was their story, and I do not think that had been done before, which my director felt gave us the licence to be creative with the look and colours. Researching this film was exciting as it was the first time I saw proof of the existence of black people as early as the eighth century BC. We found research depicting black people in beautiful tombs in the Valley of the Kings and evidence of migration between Jerusalem and Northern Africa.

As with
The Harder They Fall, colour was essential in telling this story. My dyer was kept very busy as we made all the principal cast costumes, then aged and dyed the costumes in-house. I gave specific characters colours to help tell their story; white was a very important colour in this world, and I used it to show status. I wanted the audience to see the texture in the fabrics and see that it was organic. You could see the class structure based on how refined the fabrics were.

Even though the silhouette for the biblical era was very uniform between men and women, I wanted to define each character’s style. We needed to show individualism. How the clothes were worn, the state of the clothes, colours, and jewellery helped with this. Costumes, footwear, and jewellery were made in Rome, Spain, and Hungary for the film; because of our shooting location, I had to expand the building and manufacture of specialty pieces outside the small historic city of Matera. We were fortunate to find a few locals we could hire to make custom pieces, but our volume was too large for them to accommodate us for more than a piece at a time. It was really important to me to involve the locals in what we were doing, as this was the first time they had worked on a film. They were so honoured to be involved!

The director suggested I watch films that inspired him in the writing and making of this film.
Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979),
Spartacus (1960),
Gladiator (2000) and
Jesus of Nazareth (1977). All of which inspired him for different reasons. They were very helpful, even to see what others had done before.