BACKGROUND

How did you become a costume designer?

Sammy: I started in theater as a costume maker, and then did a degree in costume designing at Wimbledon [School of Art], and then when I left college started assisting theater designers, and also designing pop promos and ads. Then I got a job with the lady who designed Gladiator [Janty Yates]. I did two films with her, I did Plunkett & Macleane and then Gladiator, and then designed Black Hawk Down and recently I've done The Merchant of Venice, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and a film about a kinky boot factory called Kinky Boots.

I did a lot of pop promos and ads, like 4 or 5 years of doing 30 pop promos a year and lots of ads. One of the guys that I work with a lot directed Hitchhiker [Garth Jennings], and he was someone I'd worked with for years, so, you know, you kind of grow up with people.

What are the key differences between theater and film from a costume designer's point of view?

Sammy: Well theater is live, so you have to make sure everything is on the ball every performance. I suppose film is more real. In theater you can get away with pushing the boundaries of period pieces and it can be quite quirky, and you don't have to have a reality in the same way if you're in film. Like on Black Hawk Down, I had to be very specific and true to what happened in Somalia, so you're really guided a lot by the events that you're filming.

Does film feel more restrictive or more challenging?

Sammy: A bit of both, really. I find doing period pieces easier than modern because everyone seems to have such an opinion on modern clothing. V For Vendetta is set slightly in the future, which makes it really challenging to try and predict where fashion is going in the next 20 years.

WORKING ON V FOR VENDETTA

How did you get onto V for Vendetta?

Sammy: I met James, had an interview, and he gave me the job!

How did he describe the project to you when you first met him?

Sammy: I hadn't read the script when I met him, which is quite unusual; he basically described the comic book to me in my interview. Quite an odd situation, you don't normally get that, you usually have the script and you come with some ideas, but I had no idea about the project at all, really, although I had kind of vaguely heard of the book. So he described the plot and then I showed him my work and he made a decision. I suppose it's quite an odd way of getting a job, really.

Did he express to you in the interview what he wanted of the V costume designer?

Sammy: A little bit. It was more of an overview of the book. He vaguely gave me guidance into what he wanted in terms of it not being too overtly fashionable or too period. He didn't give me too much on the first meeting because I hadn't read the script, so he didn't want to give too much away I suppose.

Once you had the job and the script, what was the first thing you did?

Sammy: V had to be designed first as this costume is complicated due to the amount of action. Then from that we went on to design the army and the big crowd of Vs and all the separate kinds of soldiers and then Fingermen. After which we went into the detail of each character.

When did you start on this production?

Sammy: I was on another film when I started this film, it was all a very last minute decision for me coming on board. I had something like 5 weeks prep, it was so short! It was 5 weeks in the UK and then we were over here in Germany the week before we started shooting. We were just buying and buying for all these characters to prep, and a lot of them hadn't been cast, so that was tough.

How do you buy for a character you only know through the script, when you don't know who it's going to be?

Sammy: I don't know! We did it, though. You just have to read the script and be quite faithful to your intuition. It was so difficult, my assistant and I were shopping from the minute the shops opened until 8 o'clock at night in London to try and get a stock together of costumes we could use for all these different people. Also, when you're dealing with a lot of these guys who are wearing suits, they have day changes. I mean, Finch has something like 9 day changes. Deitrich had 6 or 7, Dominic's got 8 or 9, something like that. So we had to really get a wardrobe of clothes together for each person.

James gave me leaders as to who he wanted, even though they weren't cast, so I kind of knew certain people were coming on board and you know their bodies from guessing. I can guess people's chest size without measuring them, usually. So you do have to go instinctively, and then when you get them in and start fitting them and start working through the shooting days, you move things around. It really has been a case of working out as we go along because it was such short prep.

So, you get a ballpark size for an actor, get a wardrobe together with that ballpark size, and then get them in for a fitting.

Were there any instances that things went awry?

Sammy: Yes, Stephen Fry had been on a diet and his waist was 7 inches smaller! Nobody really knew. And another actor had lost 4 or 5 inches off his chest and his waist. Then somebody else turned up and was twice the size. On a whim I went to Steve's house to fit him before I came out to Germany and thank god I did! It's funny because I'd seen him at the BAFTAS and I thought he doesn't look as big as his measurements.

What goes on at a fitting?

Sammy: You're working it out. It's nice when you get the measurements and they're right and you get the clothes on and they fit. But you know, you don't want to make people feel fat, either. With women, if you take clothes that are too small, they immediately ask, "Oh, have I put weight on?" It's tricky.

I think it's more difficult for day player characters or background characters that you have to dress for a specific reason. There are a lot of people we've asked to bring things, if they're in the pub, or background in Jordan Tower, but a lot of the time they'll give you different sizes than what they actually are. So you always have to have backup because you know things are going to change.

When you first came onto the production with 5 weeks of prep and many characters to dress, how did you decide whom to shop for when?

Sammy: Charlotte and I will go through what is essential in terms of the shooting schedule: you work out what you're shooting first and you prioritize the characters, and you know who is coming out for a fitting when. So we split it and Charlotte buys this and this and I'll go buy this and this and we'll go in town together, go off, meet up; it really was a real rigorous schedule of shopping. In between that I had meetings with James, we had to come and reccie in Germany. I was designing V and we had a big belt thing going on where we had to work out how the belt was going to fit on with Simon the armorer, because the belt is actually shaped, it's not a straight belt. There are a few things I'm fixated about and one of them is making belts sit on the body on an angle, I don't' really know why, but I just think it's sexy. A belt going straight around the body just cuts you straight off.

The belt is an echo of a V shape.

Sammy: Exactly. It's sexy. I'm totally obsessed with that. On period costumes or costumes like that, I can't bear things going straight. I have to angle them. So I had to talk Simon through what I thought visually the belt should do, and he worked out physically how the belt worked. He made the knives on the belt, so he had to work out the angles they'd sit on. It would have been much easier for the knives sit in straight, but it just wasn't right for me. Also, the doublet comes down at the front and elongates the body and makes it look much more attractive; guys don't look good with that around their middle.

I always think about those things when I'm designing stuff that fits: what physically is going on underneath, the way the muscles are in your body. If you want someone to look muscular you need to think about where the muscles naturally curve in the body and accentuate that in a good way. I hope that's what's happened!

Do you go see the dailies?

Sammy: Yes, when I can. I went every night in the beginning, but it just got impossible because once the two units started they work at different times and I have to be on both units.

What do you look for in the dailies?

Sammy: Continuity, whether anything is wrinkling where it shouldn't, or not wrinkling where it should. I tend to notice things, I'm probably a bit too fixated. I'm into natural wrinkles where it's necessary, and with the V costume, we had the opposite. When we first started shooting it was always collapsing across the chest and I saw that watching dailies. So we had to stop and think of a different way of making the doublets so they fitted his body and gave him a chest. There's felt inside the chest, and depending on who's playing V, there's more or less padding.

You buy too many things for fittings and approval; what do you do with what you don't use?

Sammy: Sometimes we return things if they're absolutely wrong. Often I keep them and we use them on other characters. We have to double most things, so there have been a few hiccups where we've bought one thing ages ago, and/or we've used this and this and we need a double and you can't get it. Considering how many people we have dressed, we've not got a lot to spare, to be honest.

When shopping do you immediately get two of everything?

Sammy: Yes. I mean, costumes like Adam Sutler and Creedy for Victoria Station: Adam Sutler's got his suit 8 times because he's being dragged through water. And you've got a stunt double and a picture double for him, and then there could be blood. Creedy's outfit we have 5 times, because he gets strangled and he's falling down. So we have to think about the action and where we might need to have more. Big scenes like that always come later in the process, and you know the actor by then, so it's not too bad. I got their suits from a company in England, so I've now got a good relationship with a lot of shops in London that really help me out.

Do you draw all the costume sketches yourself?

Sammy: Absolutely, I have to draw. The good thing about knowing what I want, putting it on paper and showing it to James, is that it's clear. There's no mix up there. I'm really not precious about my drawings, I give him a pencil to draw on it what he thinks, so a lot of the sketches are scrawled over.

V'S COSTUME

How was V's costume developed?

Sammy: We used a little bit from the comic book, and James had ideas of what he wanted, and we looked at a lot of period clothing from Guy Fawkes's time, 1605. I kind of used the doublet shape, which was around from that time, and modernized it. It becomes quite linear and a bit sexy and textural and we kept it quite dark. The hat was based on a period shape but made a little bit more cool. Putting the period hat on top would not have been right, really.

Is it difficult to get something like the hat made?

Sammy: I have a hat maker, a boot maker, a glove maker, who I use all the time, whether the project is modern or period. I also know a company that lots of costume designers know, who make fabrics replicated from the period that you‘re dealing with. So the fabric that is used for V is actually a 16th century basket weave, so you've got a bit of period in there even though it looks very modern. And it's very textural. His doublet is made from silk and his cloak is wool and cashmere.

What were the reasons for using those natural fibers besides the period look?

Sammy: You get a different texture, like if you get a woven silk and it's got a self weave in it, it's not just a flat color, you've got a bit of light and depth to it. Because of the nature of V, he's all black, I had to find a way of making each item slightly different texturally so you could really see each thing so it didn't look like a black void. So in actual fact his cloak, although it looks black, is actually charcoal gray. It's got little white flecks in it and it's got a slight hairy texture to it so it lights different than the doublet, and then the trousers are a wool fabric with a self stripe diagonally in it. So each piece is different. And then his hat is called peach bloom, which is a type of capeline, like a felt, and then leather for the boots. So every piece, although it's black or almost black, looks different.

How do you communicate the design to the hat makers, the boot makers and the costume makers?

Sammy: I draw the ideas and talk the makers through it.

Are the first samples made with the fabric you intend to use?

Sammy: Yes, close to it. Although we might toile things up in just a black fabric, just as a shape, and then you make your first sample. The hats we played around a lot with, we had probably 5 or 6 different shapes made before we settled on one. The doublet was not so difficult because it is what it is, and having done a lot of that period before, I know a lot about doublets. As for the cloak, we've got different cloaks for different situations: we have three quarter cloaks and full circular cloaks, depending on the action. Also, the Jordan tower cloaks were actually black because the lighting was much brighter. So we used black cloaks in bright light and charcoal in dark… not that you would notice, hopefully!

Once you'd worked out the shape and the fabric, how did you present the costume to James?

Sammy: My first fitting was quite close to the shooting, so we did lots of sketches and lots of toiles on stands. James came to see us when we had our office in Shepperton quite a lot; he got quite involved with it. He really likes to look at things closely and make sure it's all what he wants. We didn't try it on too many times… I think we had proper fittings before we started shooting and then once we got it here [Berlin] we did a week of tests, and there wasn't a lot to be changed, to be honest. Once we'd worked out the shape of the cloak and the doublet, it all kind of fitted into place.

Which scenes were the three quarter cloaks needed for?

Sammy: We needed full circular capes for covering things up, like the dynamite vest. Because of the nature of it, we needed fuller capes. Also, with certain movements we used full capes, but it really depends on the action. If there's any knife work it's always a three quarter cape because it's too much to work with otherwise, and we've just had as many connotations on it as possible, to cover ourselves, really.

You cannot go out and buy V capes for the Vs in the crowd shots; where are you having them made?

Sammy: We have a guy in Bedford who I've used on lots of films. We met on Gladiator - he made a lot of tunics for it - he's really good at churning out thousands of pieces, so we just asked him to make 550 capes. We got the fabric from Cornwall, I think… we went through so many connotations of black samples of fabric for that. In his factory he normally works for the fashion industry, but he always gives us a slot in his work time. The multiple Vs wear normal clothes underneath their capes because they're just general public who've been sent the capes.

How have special or visual effects affected costume construction or design?

Sammy: It kind of doesn't. I suppose a bullet hit is something that's special effects and we just kind of work with it. They tell us how many quadruples of things they might need to blow up, and we try and facilitate that. It's a bit give and take. There were times when we ran out of fabric for V's cape, so we had to get someone to weave a similar fabric, or we had to find something similar at another factory in England.

There came a point, actually, when we physically couldn't make any more doublets for V because it was impossible in the time to make what we needed to do the shots, so we got less doublets made than we needed to, but then we faked the fronts of things, so you couldn't tell. We made fake fronts because each one of those doublets is heavily padded and shaped and it's a lot of work, and we've got back and front opening ones, depending on what scenes there are. The tailors were totally overwhelmed with work and it got to the point where we were shooting the things we needed costumes for and they physically weren't able to do it all, so we worked around it.

On set you said you stitched David Leitch ­V stunt double ­ into his costume; is that what you actually did, or is that an expression?

Sammy: Anyone who plays V gets stitched in at the neck. The cloak that we designed had a bit of a flaw in it that whatever you fasten at the neck, because it's edge to edge, you can never get it totally to look like it should. We tried different hooks, we tried under garments, all different ways, but it still pulled apart. So in the end we just stitch him in every time, because it looks dead neat. James was very adamant that he didn't want any detail at the neck because you've got the collar and then the cape coming over and it just looks messy if you start putting buckles or fastenings, it takes away from the simplicity and the line of everything. So we made the decision that this costume has to be stitched into. Which is a bore for the person playing him, but it looks better. But you don't want to go to the toilet in a hurry in that costume!

Where were V's boots made?

Sammy: V's boots I designed and had made in Italy. They were originally based on a biker boot and had a zipper up the back, but it just looked messy and wrong. I also wanted them to have a period feel, so we ended up starting off with a typical period sole, which was just too thin and didn't look sexy enough. So I got them to do a welted sole, so you get the stitching around the boot, and I made the heel a bit chunkier so it's like a biker boot. It was a pull on boot, so we toyed with the width of it so it was still tight enough to look sexy.

Boots of that period had a kind of piece of leather with a strap going through that you see on cavalier boots, which are a bit later, and they have this turn up and a big buckle made out of leather. So there's a detail on the front where I've actually got a piece of leather stitched into them that mimics that shape, but it's part of the boot. It's really subliminal, but I know it's there!

The other thing I had put in his costume, if you look at him from the back or the front, on the doublets there's a V in the front and the back. You've got your shoulders and then your collar, and it's just so much sexier if you look at them from the back, it elongates his neck. Instead of having a straight line across the neck, it leads his neck into his body without it looking like a stuck on collar. It has more purpose.

Within the film, where did V get his clothing?

Sammy: He made it himself, of course! He makes everything!

How many costumes does each V have?

Sammy: It's always moveable. We started off with 8 complete sets and we've got way more than that. I don't know how many we've got now. We kept making them for different scenes, and then it became obvious we needed back and front openings and fake fronts, and we've had a terrible time with the trousers: they keep ripping at the crotch because of so much action! There wasn't really a set amount, we just knew we needed hero plus double for that and then so many to do squibs, and so many for front opening, back opening, so it really adds up. You always have to take on board stunts when you've got an actor doing that much action, so you just take that into account.

Do the squibs actually make the hole in the garment?

Sammy: Yes… well, they treat the fabric, they make little holes in it, on top of the explosion that blows the fabric away.

Was that cape made from cashmere?

Sammy: Yes, they all are! Although we have loads of rehearsal ones because we toyed with using different silks, including a hand washed silk, to capture slow motion or fast or whatever, and in the end it became obvious that the wool and cashmere mix was the best because of the weight of it. It hangs beautifully and then when it moves, it moves with a real heavy flow, rather than silk which goes a bit too fluttery. We did toy with going lighter with the wool, this, that and the other, but then it was also matching the charcoal gray because we used a specific charcoal gray.

Did the mask affect anything you did with the V costume?

Sammy: We had to make sure that the hat fit with it. We had kind of an issue here where we needed to cover his neck and the reason that the neck of his costume is so high is because the alternative was to make the mask go down, which when you move your head, it just wouldn't work. So we had to make sure the neck of his costume didn't push the mask up and down and it all worked together well, and then the hat sits over it, so it looks natural.

Where have various costume elements been created?

Sammy: V's doublets were made here in the studio [Studio Babelsberg]. We have a tailor that is here permanently with us doing any alterations and small makes. And apart from that, the shoes were all made in Italy, apart from Natalie's shoes because she doesn't wear leather. I have a guy in London who makes vegan shoes, so he made a lot of shoes for us, and there's another company we got some shoes from as well. So it's spread out. But we've done a lot of production here in Berlin.

Have you worked in Germany before?

Sammy: No, it has been good, I have enjoyed it.

Has language ever become an issue?

Sammy: Not at all, most people speak English, and I've picked up a bit of German.

MILITARY COSTUMES

Was the army uniform print designed specifically for the film?

Sammy: Those uniforms are real and have never been used in combat, which is why I wanted to use them because I didn't want us to use something that we know, but it almost looks like you know it. It's one of those things where in the future they will probably use urban camouflage, so that's trying to predict a bit. The battles the army has now are in urban areas and not out in the forest. Naturally the British army wears forest camo and recently they've started to go into desert camo, so it's something that looks different, really. Not British, but not any army… it's more used at the moment as a fashion thing.

We toyed with designing our own camo… we tried to do some drawings using the buildings in London and how we have sandstone that has gone dirty and the geometric nature of it. I drew up a lot of different ideas and tried to get it printed, but the lead time to get it printed versus how fast we needed to shoot it didn't work out. We would have had to have it printed in China, shipped to America, made up in America, brought back here to Germany, and for the time frame and the cost, buying urban camo in America was just so cheap, you couldn't by it in England that cheap. There were lots of reasons why we went down that route.

I would have loved to have used the camo we designed because I did research a bit into what the armies around the world are doing in the future for camo, and there's a lot going on with high tech kind of disruptive pattern being the optical illusion, and they are going very geometrical, which I thought would have worked really well in London because all the buildings, brick and stone, are linear.

How did you show different groups of the government were also part of the same group?

Sammy: You have the Norsefire, which is the past army, and so this insignia, the Norsefire flag, we used for them translates into the Fingermen and a little bit into the general army. We linked them with the insignia and also the way that the police and soldiers have developed their uniforms, like the Norsefire dress uniforms for the marching were not meant to be worn as combat outfits.

So if you go backwards, uniforms are less protective. When you go forward in time, we've got the Fingermen in combat, they're all in one piece black jumpsuits and flack jackets, and they were going to have helmets and then we decided they shouldn't have helmets, which is a bit more SAS. And then for the regular army, we decided to use urban camouflage, which has not been used in combat at all yet, apparently. And we've over dyed it to take out the white so it looks slightly different. It's actually charcoal gray and white, then we dipped it down to take the edge off the white, otherwise they'd look like Friesian cows or something!

The Norsefire scene had 40 guys marching and I'd gotten the boots through product placement from Belstaff. I had to tell casting what size boots we had because they couldn't cast in time before I ordered the boots, as they were made in Italy. I had to say we have so many 8s, 9s, 10s, 11s, then we had to fit people to them. Usually it's the other way around.

We got the army uniform from Texas I think, and then we got the vests from somewhere else in America. We got helmets for the army here in Germany, then had the helmet covers made, and then we've used these masks that are kind of like a visor and patched them all together, so it looks like one big helmet unit. The idea in that was James wanted mask versus mask in the end.

Everything's going back [to England] at the moment. They've already got all the army uniforms, they went a couple of weeks ago, and at the moment in England we're fitting the army and the Vs, then next week we'll be fitting the 16th century hanging scene, which is being prepped at the moment. Right now my assistant [Charlotte Kaye] is out there doing that. There's a lot to coordinate, actually.

EVEY'S COSTUME

Natalie Portman's character, Evey, changes a lot throughout the film; what did James see for her character?

Sammy: Yes, her character is quite complex really, because she's not a pretty girly girl, and she's not hard, she's very in-between. This is because of her character's upbringing and where she came from, in terms of her family being political activists and her brother dying through this disease, the virus. She's quite a complex character to try and pin down as to what her clothing choices would be. She could have gone many ways, and we kept it simple, apart from the fact that Natalie's so gorgeous she can wear anything. She goes on a real journey, from being a straight kind of office girl to the journey of being locked up and shaved and her whole outlook on life being turned around. I worked out in the beginning we'd have about 8 or 9 costume changes, and I've now got nearly 4 boxes of clothes that she's worn. She has about 40 outfits or so.

How did the character evolve from 8 to 40 costumes?

Sammy: When you first read the script you go, day costume, however you don't know what the day breakdown is when you first read a script like this, so it got really wide very quickly. When I first read the script, I'm like ok, maybe there are 20 script days, and then there are 39. On top of that we did a lot of stills that are in the scenes. There are flashback and flash forward scenes that you don't actually, on the first reading of the script, get. It evolved. The film generally for all the characters evolved into many more costumes than I originally thought. So we have a lot of costumes, and something like 80 or 90 characters that we originally thought would be about 45.

How much did you discuss the Evey character with Natalie before you started working?

Sammy: I met her to measure her and we had a very short discussion. Then I did a lot of buying for her and then we did some trying on when we first arrived here [in Berlin], and that evolves as well because it's modern clothing. People do feel more comfortable in having an opinion about what they like and what they don't like. From the first meeting she may have read the scripts and thought a different way than me because it's quite personal, so I take on board all of that, you have to, because you can't have someone not believing in the character because of the way I've dressed them.

We had a lot of discussion and it was really positive. As time has gone on, and because it got more and more clothing, it kind of becomes clear and sometimes it doesn't, it gets more complicated, partly because you don't want to repeat anything. You've gone from 8 outfits to 40, so your choices have become slimmer as to where the development goes in terms of clothing.

Evey spends quite a bit of this film in men's clothing or in an orange tunic in Larkhill and at Deitrich's. It was a tough one to know what to do with her in the Shadow Gallery… V takes her there and she wakes up in the clothes that she's been to work in and she's there for quite a length of time. What does she wear? We had to make up a backstory that V eventually got her some things and there were clothes there anyway because he's a collector of stuff, you know, books, art, any, everything, music, so why not clothing too?

There's an opportunity for her to wear some period pieces!

Sammy: I tried to slip a few little 40s style dresses, which are quite trendy at the moment, but it didn't really work because her character isn't that - feminine isn't the right word, really - she's not really that bothered about her clothing because there are more mental things that are important to tell the story than dressing fashionably.

MEN IN SUITS

What was one of the things you found particularly challenging on this project?

Sammy: One of the toughest things, generally, in this film was trying not to bring in anything that's too overtly fashion, so you're not dating the film 2005. So what I've done a lot with the guys is pick quite simple suits and then found quite odd shoes that are pointy or square toed or just different than your average office workers' wardrobe, you know, a plain black shoe. Also, some of the combinations of ties and shirts I've kept in a monotone color so it's not typical. A little bit off-beat.

It's a tough one when you're dealing with 2025 and we're in 2005; people are not going to stop wearing suits to work, but how can we give it a slight edge, without it being obviously space age or futuristic. We're probably going to wear the same jeans, T-shirts and natural fabrics, so I've kept along that route really.

Do the Deitrich and Prothero characters also fit into the category of suits with a twist?

Sammy: Yes. With Deitrich, though, I tried to go a little bit down. Having just said I didn't want anything fashionable, I used a lot of Japanese designer clothing on him! But you wouldn't really know, it just looks more casual. He needed to have a kind of slightly artsy edge to him, so I didn't want him in a shirt, tie, and suit always. I mean, we have to on the Deitrich show because that's what every person who's the host of a show does. In his house he was a bit more casual, cotton jackets and soft trousers. He's a tall guy!

Prothero, we padded him up for his things on the telly [television], interviews he did, and Prothero inserts. We padded him up and made him slightly larger than life with slightly gaudy ties, and with everything a bit too tight.

How much do you coordinate with the hair and make up departments?

Sammy:I always talk to them, and tell them what people are wearing. And they're fantastic on this film! Liz, Paul and Jeremy; they've been really inventive. We work really well together and always try to keep each other informed of what's what.

Do you put a costume together, have that approved, and then the hair and make up would be done?

Sammy: Yes, they'd come take a look, unless it was prosthetics or scars or you just know what's going to happen. And certainly, there've been times where we've done stills with Valerie and with Evey, and there might be flashbacks where we've had to go slightly more period, or move things around a bit, so Jeremy said, "I'm going to do this with the hair," so I said, "OK, I'll do this," or vice versa. It's a bit of give and take.

VALERIE'S POSTERS

Did you have a hand in styling Valerie's shots for the movie posters?

Sammy: Yes. One of the posters is from [a film called] The Salt Flats, which is what will be filmed in the film as well, it's not just a poster. That was set in the 1940s, a kind of late day dress; I got a lot of day dresses to choose from there. She's absolutely stunning, as well, Natasha, so you don't have to do a lot, she's just beautiful.

There was another poster for which we had a gold and silver dress. Owen [Paterson, Production Designer] came to me and said, "I want to do something that's a bit Klimt. You know, The Kiss," so that was the inspiration. I said, "Where am I ever going to find a gold and silver dress that looks like nothing that you've seen before!" One of the ladies I'm working with said she has a contact at Wunderkind, which is a label that just started two years in Germany, so they lent us some dresses just to do the stills. The gold and silver dress just looked stunning, and never seen before really, so that was quite exciting doing those stills.

We made up everything for those stills: we also put her in a 30s dress, did a little naked shot… and had a bit of fun with those posters. We had a whole rack of clothing and we went, what should we do now?

We did the same with Ruth: we did a still of her dressed as a man, so I went to the shop ­ there are some fantastic 1940s shops here - and I found three 34 chest men's suits from the 40s, all of which fitted her, so we had some fun with that, too.

GUY FAWKES

What has been your most challenging costume project on this film so far?

Sammy: Making Guy Fawkes in 5 days! The actual Guy Fawkes hanging we're doing in two weeks time [in England], but we had to do the cellar scenes with the dogs and the sword fight two weeks ago. I think it's been a debate who's going to play the part for some time, so I had to basically design his costume and then have the people I've got making costumes in London on call to say here are the measurements, get it done. We did doublet breeches, shirt, cape, doublet, in 5 days.

The same company that we got the V doublet fabric from, I got this other fabric that his doublet's made out of. There's another link there to V: the hat's a bit more period, but based on the same idea, and the doublet is similarly shaped in the body. That was a challenge… and to get 8 pike men when there was no armor left in Europe. We got someone to make some armor damn sharp!

How could there be no armor left in Europe?

Sammy: There are three film productions going on at the same time, so we've been going around asking, "Please, make this in two days!" But we did it, and everyone thought it looked great. That was a challenge because I thought I was never going to get it done in time. It's lucky I'd just done The Merchant of Venice last year, so I knew 16th century costume, and a way of getting it through quicker.

How do you go about procuring pieces to look like they are from 1605?

Sammy: You hire costumes. You know you've got 223 people, which is what it's meant to be, and we've got say, 65 women, 75 men, lower class and then you've got so many upper class, and we know body wise how physically different people are. You just have to cover yourself, really. For 223 people you might have an extra 100, so you're looking at 350 costumes in order to fit it. And there are times when, for instance, we've got pike men and horsemen and there's only so much armor available at that moment because there are other Elizabethan things going on. So we tell the casting people what sizes we've got, and they try and get people to fit them. It's a bit of give and take.

Thanks so much for your time Sammy.