The Remaking of Bob Dylan’s Type in ‘A Full Unknown’

Arianne Phillips, the Academy Award-nominated costume designer, spent years unpicking layers of reality and fiction to create the wardrobe for Bob Dylan’s character within the new biopic “A Full Unknown.”

The film, starring Timothée Chalamet, focuses on the origins, and motivation, of the famously enigmatic singer-songwriter. Phillips says arising with the costumes wasn’t simple, and there was a whole lot of guesswork concerned.

“Our story is about Bob’s origin — discovering his method to New York Metropolis seeking his hero, Woody Guthrie and his relationship to fame. A biopic on him is kind of tough as a result of he’s a really cryptic particular person, who has saved a whole lot of myths alive about his life. He’s by no means been actually forthcoming and it’s a part of his persona — he’s this mythological character that he’s created for himself,” says Phillips, who labored carefully with the director James Mangold.

Phillips says she managed to create a display screen persona by shining a light-weight on Dylan’s passions, dressing Chalamet in motorbike jackets, skinny fits impressed by Dylan’s time with The Beatles and darkish sun shades to hide his shyness.

She additionally paid shut consideration to paint, dressing Dylan in suede jackets that grew to become progressively darker in shade as he rose to fame, and grow to be extra mysterious within the heady years of the American civil rights motion, the anti-Vietnam motion and the precursor to the Summer time of Love.

She spent years researching the popular culture star, and winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize for Literature. (He made headlines for failing to attend the Stockholm ceremony because of undisclosed “preexisting engagements.”)

Phillips started her Dylan research in 2019, studying “Dylan Goes Electrical!” by Elijah Wald, on which the movie relies. She additionally hung out with Suze Rotolo’s memoir “A Freewheelin’ Time,” and hours listening to numerous audiobooks.

However the mysteries remained.

“He informed tales to those who he was a hobo and that he was raised within the circus and jumped trains. None of these tales had been true, however he created them about himself and dressed that method,” says Phillips.

Dylan’s former girlfriend Rotolo, who died in 2011, wrote in her e book that when Dylan arrived in New York Metropolis in 1961, he was sporting work pants, dungarees and plaid Pendleton shirts in a nod to his idol Guthrie, whose songs had been concerning the working man and Americana.

Rotolo describes that look as “fairly messy and raveled,” however stated his model rapidly modified by the point the 2 met in 1962. He began to put on Levi’s, which grew to become a staple of his look.

Main as much as the Newport People Competition in 1965, his silhouette steadily grew to become slimmer as he turned from folks musician to rock star enjoying electrical music. To wit, he selected a salmon pink shirt and black denims when different artists had been sporting plaid shirts.

Dylan’s new discovered confidence and rock-‘n’-roll perspective was additionally knowledgeable by his travels to Britain, assembly and hanging out with The Beatles, Donovan and poets like Allen Ginsberg.

“He grew to become a part of a group that’s the middle of a youth tradition motion round what’s occurring socially and politically,” says Phillips.

“Bob got here again [to America] dressing extra performative, and with extra thought. He put his personal tackle the British Mods — his denims acquired skinny and his Chelsea boots grew to become very pointy,” she provides.

For the movie, Phillips made it her mission to trace down the precise model of Levi’s that Dylan wore as none of her classic collectors, or sellers, may determine them.

She reached out to Levi’s a complete 12 months earlier than filming started in March to pinpoint Dylan’s denims. Paul O’Neill, Levi’s Classic Clothes’s head designer, discovered them within the model’s expansive archive. 

They had been the uncommon Lot 606 Tremendous Slims, which had been introduced up by Japanese denim collectors within the Nineties.

In 2019, proper earlier than it was introduced that Mangold was writing and directing the Dylan biopic, Levi’s produced a classic capsule assortment of the Tremendous Slims for the Asian market that got here with its personal espresso desk e book showcasing the seems to be.

“Once I noticed the e book and assortment, I used to be freaking out as a result of it appeared like our film,” says Phillips, who had been exchanging many photographs with O’Neill, exhibiting how the denims advanced.

“Rotolo actually lower the within seam of his denims and put an insert of one other piece of denim in order that they’d match properly across the boot — and this was method earlier than the denim flare. She helped him work out his model as a result of his denims weren’t becoming properly over his boots,” says Phillips, who recreated the nuance of the denims within the movie.

The suede jackets are of explicit significance and salute Dylan’s love for bikes and being on the American highway.

Certainly one of them is a duplicate of the tan jacket he wears on the quilt of his second studio album “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” with Rotolo holding his arm on the album cowl; a light-weight two pocket caramel suede motorbike jacket and a darkish chocolate brown suede jacket with bone buttons that he wore on the finish of ‘65.

The 83-year-old rock star is credited as an govt producer on the movie and after studying the script, he gave Mangold a tough tip that “my story is a fairy story,” Phillips recollects.

“Even to at the present time, he holds this mystique round his personal life and he doesn’t actually wish to decide to any of the info,” she provides.

Director Mangold stated Phillips has an important means to deliver characters to life on display screen — irrespective of how mysterious they’re, or whether or not they’re keen to cooperate along with her.

He stated she’s capable of “to color a whole world” by means of her costumes, working carefully with the actors from early within the filmmaking course of.

“She creates such a profound sense of openness, and shows such an absence of an ‘agenda’ to the actors. They really feel liked and heard and have an actual discovery course of. There’s magic in these early classes, a magic that serves because the launching pad for nice performances,” says Mangold.

Phillips is a veteran. She has labored on each of Tom Ford’s movies, “A Single Man” and “Nocturnal Animals” and has simply wrapped “I Need Your Intercourse” starring Charli XCX and Olivia Wilde, who she labored with on “Don’t Fear Darling.”

She prefers to supply gadgets from the time interval she’s working with fairly than work with manufacturers. “I actually crave the unique fabrications from the time interval because it has a sure weight and feeling to it,” she stated.

Her trend profession began within the ‘80s when she was styling Lenny Kravitz for his debut album “Let Love Rule” that led to her subsequent gig as Madonna’s trend oracle for greater than twenty years on album covers, music movies, live performance excursions and her directorial debut “W.E.” and designed the costumes for Quentin Tarantino’s “As soon as Upon a Time…in Hollywood” and “Stroll the Line,” the Johnny Money biopic that Mangold directed in 2005.

She loves creating pictures on the intersection of trend and music, and stated that, like Dylan, she was vastly influenced by British road tradition and trend.

“England is exclusive as a result of music and trend have at all times lived collectively harmoniously in a youth tradition motion,” says Phillips.