The screening on Wednesday 28 January will be introduced by Dr Alice Sage, Research Fellow on the Film Costumes in Action project
‘Impeccable Exactitude’ – The costumes of The Grand Budapest Hotel
The Grand Budapest Hotel (directed by Wes Anderson, 2014) takes us back, via the 1980s and 1960s, to 1932 in a fictional European state called Zubrowka, a place deeply saturated with colour and nostalgia. Milena Canonero’s costume designs enhance the sense of lost time through a procession of formal dress and tailored uniforms in rich, resonant tones: Monsieur Gustave’s imperious purple tailcoat, the sugar-plum shades of Agatha’s floury apron, Madame D in her aristocratic cocoon of glowing red velvet.
The Grand Budapest Hotel was the third film that Canonero designed with Wes Anderson, and won the designer her fourth Academy Award for Best Costume. Many of Canonero’s trademarks are recognisable here: a tightly controlled colour palette, sophisticated historicism, and unashamed visibility – Canonero’s costumes do not typically fade into the background. This ‘flamboyant’ style (Pesce, 2016) has been evident since her early work with director Stanley Kubrick (A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon and The Shining), and can be traced through a filmography that includes Out of Africa (1985), the TV series Miami Vice (1986-7), and Marie Antoinette (2006).
When work began on The Grand Budapest Hotel, Canonero built a team of around 30 specialist makers to realise her designs (including printers and dyers, tailors, dressmakers and milliners), and brokered collaborations with fashion houses Prada and Fendi. The result is couture costume production, at a superlative level of craftsmanship and luxury. This team included Jan Dieckmann and Benjamin Tyrrell, Berlin-based textile artists who specialise in hand-dying, painting and printing. Tyrrell summarised Canonero’s approach as ‘impeccable exactitude. The combination of Wes and Milena – both of them know exactly what they want. Impeccable exactitude.’
The first costume the duo produced was Madame D’s coat, made of luminous red silk velvet, printed with glittering gold motifs. Madame D (played by Tilda Swinton), is an art collector and throwback to the Belle Époque. Taking inspiration from Gustav Klimt, Dieckmann and Tyrrell presented numerous patterns for Canonero’s approval, and joined costume fittings to test the placement of motifs. Once agreed, the design was screen-printed onto flat fabric, before it was cut and sewn together into the coat. Then finally came ‘the fine tuning and hand-painting that we can do on a finished garment,’ says Dieckmann. ‘Weeks of our lives were spent on that coat. And we do multiples, so we did that twice.’ Only a fraction of the audience will ever notice that the blue silk lining of the coat is also printed, but ‘it is part of what they remember, what Madame D wears.’ The memorable coat was finished with inky black fur cuffs and collar from Italian couturier Fendi. ‘That is a very unique and special part of working with Milena. Because she is who she is, she makes these collaborations.’
The Grand Budapest Hotel was filmed in deepest winter in an empty department store in Görlitz, a small town on the German-Polish border. The costume department was installed on the very top floor, next to the stained-glass atrium over the hotel lobby. ‘We worked very closely with the other makers because we were under one roof, and therefore you can be absolutely sure what you’re doing is going to make sense, especially with the printing,’ says Dieckmann. ‘It was crazy spectacular without realising,’ adds Tyrrell. ‘At the time, you’re just achieving and delivering, ticking things off the list and trying to please.’
Much of the work on that list involved dyeing costumes to achieve the ‘especially enchanting’ and specific colours that Canonero had envisioned. They even dyed waistcoat buttons for every member of the Society of Crossed Keys, who appear on screen for just seconds. These tiny details, says Tyrrell, ‘add up to the whole big picture, this big wonderful world that’s being created.’ Dieckmann explains that their work ‘is never just one technique… you dye the fabric, then you probably screenprint it, and then you hand-paint dark shades into it… it’s a combination of many steps.’ Tyrrell adds, ‘we even dyed paper, to make the hats for the Mendl patisserie, in that very specific blue… We were dyeing sheets of paper so they had no stain going through, we’d dry them as fast as possible, then iron them, give them to the hatmaker.’
The textile artists also embraced the opportunity to hand-print costumes. Dieckmann recalls, ‘when Madame D is in her coffin, it was just a close-up shot of her face and down to her waist. So we hand-blocked a tabard that was laid over her.’ Tyrrell continues, ‘Milena said she wanted it to be jewel-like. That was a lovely word from her, it was the perfect description for what was required. So, with a little bit of iridescent powder in the paint, and gold, [we created] something more like an insect or a butterfly.’
Despite the months of planning and careful execution, sometimes film costuming requires resourceful quick-thinking. ‘We were already wrapped, all our equipment was gone, and there was suddenly a request for new socks for Agatha’ (played by Saoirse Ronan). Her original off-white socks now needed to be pistachio-coloured. Tyrell was in Görlitz with ‘no dyes, nothing. So I went over to the drugstore, and they had dyes you use for colouring Easter eggs – so I managed to dye the socks in exactly the right shade… I rinsed them, spun them, and as soon as they came out the dryer they disappeared off to the set.’ The socks are seen prominently in close up when Agatha climbs a ladder – so the rush was worth it. ‘And that was all miraculously done with Easter egg dye!’
Dr Alice Sage
With thanks to Benjamin Tyrrell and Jan Dieckmann. Dieckmann and Tyrrell have since worked on two more Anderson-Canonero movies, The French Dispatch (2021) and The Phoenician Scheme (2025).
References
Deborah Nadoolman Landis, Dressed: A Century of Hollywood Costume Design (Harper Design, 2007)
Sara Pesce, ‘The Baroque imagination: Film, costume design and Italian high fashion’, Film, Fashion & Consumption (Aug 2016). 5(1), pp. 7-28
Natasha Rubin, ‘Milena Canonero’ (in) The Bloomsbury Encyclopaedia of Film and Television Costume Design (Bloomsbury, 2023)
Matt Zoller Seitz, ‘An interview with Milena Canonero’, The Wes Anderson Collection: The Grand Budapest Hotel (Abrams, 2015)
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Director: Wes Anderson
©: TGBH LLC, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, TSG Entertainment Finance LLC.
Production Company: Fox Searchlight Pictures
In association with: Indian Paintbrush, Studio Babelsberg
Presented by: American Empirical Picture
Made in Association with: TSG Entertainment
With the support of: DFFF – Deutsche Filmförderfonds, MDM – Mitteldeutsche Medienfordefung, MFG Filmförderung, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg
Executive Producers: Molly Cooper, Charlie Woebcken, Christoph Fisser, Henning Molfenter
Produced by: Wes Anderson, Scott Rudin, Steven Rales, Jeremy Dawson
Screenplay by: Wes Anderson
Story by: Wes Anderson, Hugo Guinness
Inspired by the Writings of: Stefan Zweig
Director of Photography: Robert Yeoman
Editor: Barney Pilling
Production Designer: Adam Stockhausen
Costume Designer: Milena Canonero
Original Music: Alexandre Desplat
Sound Mixer: Pawel Wdowczak
Cast
Ralph Fiennes (M. Gustave)
F. Murray Abraham (Mr Moustafa)
Mathieu Amalric (Serge X.)
Adrien Brody (Dmitri)
Willem Dafoe (Jopling)
Jeff Goldblum (Deputy Kovacs)
Harvey Keitel (Ludwig)
Jude Law (young writer)
Bill Murray (M. Ivan)
Edward Norton (Inspector Henckels)
Saoirse Ronan (Agatha)
Jason Schwartzman (M. Jean)
Tilda Swinton (Madame D.)
Tom Wilkinson (author)
Owen Wilson (M. Chuck)
Tony Revolori (Zero Moustafa)
Léa Seydoux (Clotilde)
Tom Wilkinson (author)
USA-Germany 2014©
100 mins
Digital
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