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F rom Forrest Gump to Jessica Rabbit and Lincoln, there is a quintessence and truth that resonates from the people Costume Designer Joanna Johnston creates. Johnston may not have intended to become a filmmaker; her original inten- tion was to join the fashion industry, but serendipity and guidance from her mentors led to a career, which has yielded decades of unforgettable characters that are now fixed in the collective psyche. When asked about her preference in projects, Johnston confides, "It's entirely script-driven for me. You can have The Sixth Sense, for instance, which was contemporary, but was such an unusual story that the design aspect was quite challenging in a subliminal way. There are some periods I might desire to design, but it doesn't really matter because in the end, the story is what is going to draw your attention and drive your creativity. Period is often probably the greatest body of work, and often you're left more alone in that field because you are deemed to be the expert, you have the upper hand on the history and the costumes. As to which period is my favorite, I even used to say that I never wanted to do medieval or science fiction, but I have now done both." Regarding Johnston's body of work, longtime collaborator and producer Kathleen Kennedy, cur- rently President at Lucasfilm says, "Joanna has worked on some of the biggest films ever, and her designs are a large part of their success. But when she has the chance to do smaller movies, her genius really shines through. The first time I came to that realization was with what she crafted for Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense. Haley's clothes gave his character a sense of timelessness, not of this world. It was subtle, but specific, and perfect." Between 1978 and 1985, Johnston worked primar- ily as the assistant costume designer to Anthony Powell (Death on the Nile, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) and Tom Rand (The French Lieutenant's Woman, The Shooting Party), as well as Milena Canonero on Out of Africa, before being hired to design her own projects. Her first major project as a Costume Designer came about when Kathleen Kennedy, who had worked with her on The Temple of Doom, thought she would be the best fit for Who Framed Roger Rabbit, on which Kennedy was an executive producer. As one of the first pictures to combine live action and animation, and by far the most extensive and ambi- tious merger of the two forms undertaken at the time, Who Framed Roger Rabbit presented Johnston with a massive set of technical and logistical challenges. Not many Costume Designers had yet had to factor in Winter 2018 The Costume Designer 25 The Man from Uncle. Photo: Warner Bros. Films.