Grey gardens: there may be nothing more sartorially sacred in cinema than the fashion in the Maysles brothers' 1975 documentary gray gardens. For the upcoming HBO feature film, costume designer Catherine Thomas channeled big and little Edie—without copying them

Interview, March, 2009 by Tara Subkoff

In 1973, when filmmakers Albert and David Maysles, along with Ellen Hovde and Muffle Meyer, directed a 94-minute documentary about a reclusive mother and daughter who bore a passing relation to former first lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis--and their madly eccentric lifestyle inside a crumbling, cat-ridden East Hampton mansion--they could never have suspected the impact that Big and Little Edie Bouvier Beale would have on American culture. Due to Grey Gardens, the Beales became instant and permanent cult figures--as much for their painful fall from privilege as for the tremendously antic personalities that found them feeding raccoons in the attic, dining on cat food, and dancing an American flag salute in the downstairs foyer. Little Edie transcends cult stardom. Her highly individualistic dressing style (she was known to turn almost any piece of fabric into a turban) transformed her into an enduring fashion icon. Even in recent years, designers such as Marc Jacobs and John Galliano have created collections that evoke her spirit.

When first-time director Michael Sucsy set out to make a feature-film version of Grey Gardens (premiering in April on HBO), he was armed with two top-tier actresses to play the leads: Jessica Lange as Big Edie and Drew Barrymore as Little Edie. But he also had to worry about staying true to the mother and daughter's predilection for outrageous ensembles lest he sartorially offend legions of Grey Gardens fans. Costume designer Catherine Thomas was hired to dress Big and Little Edie in looks meant to reflect their lives over the course of four decades--from their heyday as proper New York debutantes to their reclusive piecemeal lives of squalor. Actress, fashion designer, and hardcore Grey Gardens enthusiast Tara Subkoff talked with Thomas about refashioning the Beales for our time.

TARA SUBKOFF: Hello?

CATHERINE THOMAS: Can you hear me? I'm trying to find a place that doesn't sound crackly.

TS: You sound like you're shopping somewhere. Are you shopping somewhere?

CT: I'm not. I'm at Drew [Barrymore]'s house up in the Hollywood Hills.

TS: Please send her my love. She's phenomenal in the film. At first I was wary, because I'm such a fan of the documentary. But it completely blew me away.

CT: Yes, she blew me away, too. There were so many risks on all sides in the production.

TS: It must have been very tricky to do the costumes for the feature version when the original documentary has been such a constant source of fashion inspiration. How did you decide to take on this project?

CT: I have loved Grey Gardens for so long. When I heard about the project, I begged my agent, "Please, just get me an interview. If you can get me that I swear I'll get the job."

TS: What did you think when you first watched the Maysles's documentary?

CT: Truthfully, I thought they were these two crazy women. It's not until you start getting into the layers of who these women were that you start realizing what made them that way.

TS: And what did you first think of their clothes?

CT: In some ways it was very childish. It was literally like dressing up for the camera. You have to think, when they weren't around the Maysles brothers they were probably acting a little differently. So there is some degree of fantasy to the wardrobe. But what's interesting is how they flipflop in their roles of mother and daughter ... in the way they act and in their clothes.

TS: There are moments in the feature that help to explain some of the mysteries that left me curious in the doc. Such as the scene where Little Edie's hair is falling out and she is so ashamed and panicked about it. It really made me feel for her and understand her and the turbans in a way I hadn't before.

CT: Yes, the turbans! Really, she handles her hair loss in such a progressive, positive way. She makes it her own. It was so essential to reach beyond the years of the documentary. We start in the 1930s--even the white satin hooded gown that Little Edie wears to the bohemian party is a beautiful metaphor for what's going to happen later to her, covering up her head. Obviously, we compiled a lot of research. Surprisingly there were more photos of Little Edie than of Big Edie. For the 1930s, Big Edie was really what we imagined her to be like.

TS: The 1930s are my favorite--all that glamour!

CT: The way things were cut in that decade was a real turning point for women's fashion.

TS: Did a lot come from thrift stores?

CT: It was a combination. For the early years, we basically constructed everything from scratch. The later years was an amazing process because it was like scavenging. Even if a piece wasn't an exact replica of what we saw in the documentary, if it felt right to that world then we'd use it. Another important thing we did was repeat clothes that they had throughout their lives. We had a sort of shared closet, because Big and Little Edie would swap clothes, so it turned into a decoupage of all of the periods.

TS: I noticed you were very deliberate about your color palettes to signal the different decades.