Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/831681
Spring 2017 The Costume Designer 23 Because CDG Vice President and Costume Designer Cate Adair grew up in England, she had no preconceived notions of what a Western should be, but was drawn to the genre. She even focused her art thesis on the mystery cycle of the Hopi Indians. "It has always been an interest of mine," she enthuses. "Once I got to L.A., my crews would say, 'Don't be ridiculous, Cate. Nobody's going to hire an English girl for a Western.'" But recently, Adair was able to channel her fascination into her design for The Son, AMC's drama based on Philipp Meyer's novel of the same name, starring Pierce Brosnan. Although the show covers what Adair terms "a dark piece of history," she was able to embrace the full scope of human culture and experience. The series features Native, Spanish and Mexican characters, as well as American settlers in southern Texas during the period of Comanche raids in the 1800s through the oil boom of the early 20th century. Where Westerns were once inattentive to the details of Native American clothing and culture, Adair was determined to get it right. To this end, she spent countless hours among the artifacts and records of the Comanche National Museum and Cultural Center. Costuming a series that bridges the 19th and 20th centu- ries meant that in addition to the broad range of characters, Adair also had to design for two distinct periods. "I started with the premise that this is southern Texas. So, I didn't pull research from Chicago or Boston. A different climate means a different way of life. The great thing for the 1915 portion is that I was able to find amateur photographers' work that was everyday life, not just portraiture." Her drive for realism included asking the extras about their family backgrounds and incorporating their stories into their costumes. When they produced family photos of the period, the images were used to inspire their costumes to create a new level of authenticity. Adair took it a step fur- ther by having an assistant shoot photos in black and white. "If in black and white it looked like the research, then we knew we were on the money. I was able to say to my team, 'Once they pick them up, it cannot be a costume. You have to honestly believe that that person is real.'" Adair worked with Comanche art historian and artist Juanita Padapony, who also helped Philipp Meyer with the book. "She invited me up to Oklahoma, and because she's so well respected, the Comanche Nation and the museum there opened their doors to us. She helped me piece together what we knew from the traditions and the watercolors and the more ornamented examples of their clothing that were just a bit nascent to our time period. We made everything. The detail required was exhaustive." To re-create the beading for the Comanche required not just seeds from the region, but a little practical archeology, as they had to relearn the methods used to make them. When baked and hardened, the seeds shattered under modern-day jewelry drill bits. After experimentation, they hit upon the solution, which was to burn the holes into them by hand to create the thousands of beads needed for the costumes of a whole tribe. Working on a show that serves so well as a metaphor for American history as a whole gave Adair a particularly strong mandate for authenticity. "When you're making something like this, it has to really ring true. I think that's the difference between the old and the new. There were so many shortcuts taken in the past, because the way that people felt about other people was a little bit different. Now it's really important to us to celebrate all the parts that make up the whole that is our country, to honor them and their experience, even in small ways like this. I think that's the essence of modernism." The Son Also Rises The Son/AMC, Photo: James Minchin III