Fug File: Fugs

Europe’s most expensive costume drama ever, Versailles, is premiering in the United States on October 1st on Ovation (last week, we gave you a sneak peek at its costumes and trailer). We were delighted to get a chance to quiz its costume designer, Madeline Fontaine, via e-mail, about her experience recreating the sumptuous and complex world of the the Sun King. Fontaine’s resume is highly impressive — in addition to Versailles, she was the costume designer for Amelie, Yves St. Laurent, and the upcoming Natalie Portman flick Jackie,  and has won two César Awards. In short: She knows her stuff.

GFY: Let’s jump in with the lovely Versailles. How did you get involved with this particular project?

Madeline Fontaine: I was invited to collaborate by the set designer Katia Wyszkop. How I did I immerse myself in the period and in the project? Like any other subject, it needs a time of “feeding” — made of visuals (paintings, for these days) and readings, to feel what we can find to re-create the atmosphere of the period, and learn about all we can use to realize it. We collect the information and find the right crew for such a long project. Then we make sure all this information is recorded so it can be refined later.

GFY: When did you first join the team, compared with when they actually started shooting, and when you wrapped? How long an undertaking was this?

MF: For season one, it’s been a nearly full time investment for about a year. For season two, a lot of things were already settled and we had the experience of the first season. I was mainly involved in the beginning (how to use what we did already, jumping ten years, creating new silhouettes) and choosing the design and fabrics of the new pieces for the main actors, and the new ones.

GFY: A project like this obviously involves a great deal of research; the pressure for historical accuracy must be intense. How do you balance the desire to be accurate with the desire to create something that will be appealing to a modern viewer — or the desire to put your own stamp on something?

MF: I don’t think we had the mission to be historically perfect.  I think we have to take both actors and public into a respectful feeling of a period, to make it believable and true, to use the reality of the body’s constraints which determined a language, adapting it to current physical ways of communicating and habits. The “stamp” is totally dependent of a sensibility, and cultural references, I think it cannot be hidden.

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