Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning costume designer Julie Weiss has been in the business for more than 30 years. She’s worked on more than 60 films spanning the genre spectrum, including Twelve Monkeys (for which she was nominated for an Oscar), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas , American Beauty, Hollywoodland and The Time Traveller’s Wife.

The colourful beaded jewellery and embroidered tops in Frida? That’s Weiss, purchased from Mexico City street merchants, and which earned her another Oscar nom. The jazzed up, sparkly suits from Blades of Glory? Weiss again.

Ahead of her keynote at the The Canadian Alliance of Film and Television Costume Arts and Design’s CAFTCADEMY, Weiss talked to Playback about all the ways in which costume design transcends time.

“You might have to hang a great gown on a tree and leave it there,” says Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning costume designer Julie Weiss.

Weiss isn’t talking about dressing up a set, but about the fact that being a costume designer means after fully immersing oneself into creating a costume, one must also be able to give it away.

The real draw to costume design, says Weiss – other than, say, seeing actors evolve in their careers, feeling the emotions of character as they come alive, or being on a set during a pivotal, one-take monologue – is the responsibility to dress every moment so that they will bring the audience inside the film.

“The most interesting thing about being a costume designer is that we have a chance to help develop a character,” says Weiss.

“We have a chance to say, ‘Look at me. I know that maybe I wouldn’t have been part of [the audience’s] world before, but I am now, so just figure out who I am.”

Weiss outlines the steps as a costume designer takes to start – read the script, decide you want to do the script (“more than anything”), interview with the director and see his or her concept, and meet the actor. By this time, the costume designer has done research, sketches, and (formulated) concepts.

“The point is to find that one moment that actor becomes that character, the moment that the costume becomes clothing,” says Weiss. “And then you stop.”

Weiss leads her design and creative process with elements that she says haven’t changed in the business, despite the growth of post-pro, digital editing and other technologies that can impact, and even enhance the visual outcome both during production and on-screen – old-fashioned imagination, immersion and perception.

“We’re here as storytellers, regardless of how that best is told, and regardless of where the technology is,” she says.

Weiss says costume designers – whether brand new or experienced – have to be able to read a script, know history, and not be afraid to try new things, but must “be respectful of what has already existed.”

“You have to be able to see without bias,” she adds, meaning that the designer must be able to work with blinders to his or her personal style, thinking only of the character.

“It only works if it works in the whole piece.”

Being a costume designer can also mean gluing hundreds of crystals painstakingly onto seven skating costumes (which Weiss did for Blades of Glory), creating an exquisite blue outfit only to find out that it won’t work because some shooting is being done against a blue screen, or playing with dirt.

“You have to realize that costume designers have no choice – they’re designers because they can’t stop creating,” she says. “What a costume designer does will never change. We are part of a greater film experience.”

Sketchbook: Frida

Sketchbook: Hollywoodland