Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/713388
42 The Costume Designer Summer 2016 SCRAPBOOK In the seminal 1992 film Reservoir Dogs, Betsy Heimann played a clever hand by designing simple costumes with a subtle sophistication and lasting impact. Her concept was to create a uniform that real-life gangsters, fresh from prison, could have easily assembled themselves. Many of Heimann's choices were driven by the need for multiples and the film's scant $10,000 costume budget. Though the sartorial imagery is iconic, in actuality, there were only two full suits in the film, worn by Mr. White (Harvey Keitel) and Mr. Brown (Quentin Tarantino). Heimann found a stash of Beatle jackets at the Los Angeles store American Rag Cie. While the jackets had the same silhouette, they were not all black; some were navy and others were grey. She worked closely with her cinema- tographer to find eight jackets that would read as the exact same color on film. She expressed the dif- ferences in character by varying the details for each personality. "Mr. Orange (Tim Roth) and Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi) were more uptight than the other dogs," says Heimann, "I wanted them to look more buttoned up, and to have a tighter fitting look." Thus, she paired the jackets with jeans and boots. With a nod to the French New Wave, the resulting series of slender suits and skinny ties which looked "just right" to Heimann at the time, has now found a niche in our cultural iconography and created a concept of cool that has yet to be unseated. Betsy Heimann Reservoir Dogs