“I was trying to go for like a dirty sexy.”
We had the great pleasure of getting to sit down with the lovely Sharen Davis. She talks about designing costumes for her new movie The Magnificent Seven, reveals who was her favorite character to work on and how she wanted to achieve the ‘Dirty Sexy’ look. She first met with Antoine, checked out the original and spoke with each actor Denzel Washington, Ethan Hawke and Chris Pratt, to name a few. She also did some illustrations.
When figuring out the costumes for your seven protagonists, did you take any inspiration from the original film?
The only thing I did really was have them wear all black so I can develop the character from that and that’s where we kind of branched out to each of them individually. They’re not like the [original] actors they have such different personalities I just kind of saw who they were. I was trying to go for like a dirty sexy. You know because they were in the same clothes even if they had layers and took them off basically they weren’t definitely in a variety of things so I wanted to at least make it dirty sexy.
What went into coming up with the style of each character? Did you have an immediate idea in your head or did it take a bit of time to figure out?
I got to say it’s pretty hard when they really only have one major look; it’s like a superhero costume you know they’re like super heroes, that’s who they are. So it did take a long time to give them something special and then make it subtle so you don’t get overwhelmed every time you see it. You’ll notice the little small things that are added; little accessories and you will know who they are for. I tried to add little things that will appear later on in a close up or something.
Which costume did you enjoy working on?
I loved doing Emma (Haley Bennett).
Looking at your filmography, The Magnificent Seven wasn’t the first Western that you’ve worked on. Can you talk about the differences that went into designing the costumes for this film to Django Unchained?
Well Django was a Quentin Tarantino film so it was between 1850 and 1880. The difference was one is based in a more realistic time which is Magnificent 7 and Django is between a thirty year span and a little more colorful- well a lot more colorful- and very iconic pieces that Quentin wanted on some of the characters.
Is there any genre of film you’d love to tackle that you haven’t been given the chance to do yet?
I haven’t really done a very early period like the 1700’s or 1600’s that would be great, that would be amazing. Yeah I would love to do something from that period.
