Behind the Costumes of the Film Noir Carnival in Guillermo del Toro's 'Nightmare Alley'

Guillermo del Toro’s new film, Nightmare Alley, sees Bradley Cooper as con man Stan Carlisle, who learns the tricks of faking clairvoyance at a rundown carnival. His ambitions take him and his girlfriend Molly, played by Rooney Mara, to the big city, where his drive for fame and fortune become entwined with the delusions of his act, leading to dangerous consequences. Cate Blanchett, Toni Colette, and Willem Dafoe round out the stellar cast.

Based on a William Lindsay Gresham novel from 1946 that was made into a film noir the following year, the dark story returns to the big screen in an adaptation that retains a vintage quality. This is largely thanks to costumes by Luis Sequeira, who reunites with del Torro following their Academy Award-winning work on 2017’s The Shape of Water, which snagged four Oscars, including Best Picture, and was nominated in nine other categories, including Best Costume Design. 

“I saw the original [Nightmare Alley] movie and Guillermo said, ‘OK great, you've seen it once. I don't want you to see it again. We are not remaking that movie, we are telling a new story,’” Sequeira tells L’OFFICIEL. For the new version, the costume designer was met with the challenge of creating the film noir effect in a modern production. “It was looking at the whole concept of film noir, and obviously we were doing it in color, so how can we relate that in a colorway? Working with light, reflection, tone, and tonality of each of the settings.”

Here, Sequeira delves into the meaning behind the costumes, what it was like working with Cooper and Blanchett, and why del Torro calls him the “great worrier.”

L'OFFICIEL: What was it like working with Mr. del Toro again? How involved was he in how you approached the costumes?

Luis Sequeira: Working with Guillermo is always a great challenge and he always brings the best out of you to do a better job than your last project. In regards to the conceptions of the characters, he is very involved in discussing each of their worlds and things that he sees, and from that point, I will take those notes and bring ideas to him via mood boards and references. From there, we start the dialogue of what feels right, what doesn't feel right, and that informs me to move onto the fabrics and the choices that I bring forward from those early conversations.

L'O: The film has two main settings, the carnival and then the city. How did you want to juxtapose those through the costumes?

LS: There are two different worlds and two different palates. In the carnival, everything was worn out in warm tones and had nicotine stains and sepia—there was nothing that was fresh and brand new in that world. Style wise, I was looking back. We're in 1939, but I was looking at style notes of just post-Depression era. We were in rural areas and so I wanted to have this kind of almost time-warped quality to the carnival, so that it would lay the groundwork for this whole other world when we moved into the city and everything was shiny and fresh and monochromatic, with silvers and golds, all polished. That in itself was creating the two parts to this film that we had our two main characters move through; but also as the story closes in we had some of the characters from the carnival coming into the city as reminders of that world, so it was an interesting thing to prepare both sides. 

L'O: And for Stan, we see him go from rags, to riches, back to rags again.

LS: That really is the Coles Notes [Editor’s note: like the Canadian version of Cliffs Notes] of his trajectory. It started off with finding the right proportion, being a little looser, a little sackier. Then, as his confidence began to increase, we went a little more fitted with a couple of things that he bought second-hand—still old, a little more defined but discarded. We often said that he probably burned everything from the carnival, because he didn't want trace of that in his new life. And with that, it was impeccable tailoring. We were fortunate to have 1939 suits that were issued by the British government with their tags still intact and I was able to use those as templates to build his suits. The fine elements of that are lost in modern reproductions, but we were able to get the proportions all quite succinctly together. 

L'O: When you're conceptualizing the costumes, it seems like you really dig into the psycology of the characters, too. How deeply do you think about a character's back story when you're developing the costumes?

LS: My team jokes and says I am the great decider. We are faced with decisions almost every minute of the day when we are in the design process and those are usually intuitional and how you think about the character. I always say there's no one that's thinking about the clothing for the character more than me. I'm constantly working, reworking, problemsoelving. It's an overwhelming, 24/7 thing that happens when you are on a project so you feel sound with the choices that you're making. 

Guillermo once said I'm the great worrier for him, and if I'm worrying then he doesn't have to. He said that to some colleagues, and I thought, "OK that's kind of true. I am the great worrier.” I'm forever making sure that I'm going to deliver the look not only on a character level, but also on the practical. At the end of the day it is a business as well. We are creating art, but you want to make sure everything works practically as well. 

L'O: The other character who perhaps has the most striking costumes is Dr. Lilith Ritter, played by Cate Blanchett. How closely did you work with Cate to create her wardrobe?

LS: I've collected a lot of references in hopes of doing a '30s movie one day. So I had a pair of sketchbooks that I had collected some years ago and we looked through those. There are specific details to that two year period that we both felt was right for the character. I was also lucky to have her in Toronto filming Miss America and we were able to have a preliminary measurement-taking and create a block for her, which was quite instrumental. We created the suits, blouses, and dresses knowing exactly what the fit was, which you don’t often have. You get an actor a few weeks before they go to camera and you're trying to get it all together very quickly. With this film, we had the luxury to have a bit of time to really refine those lines.

L'O: The fit really is impeccable, and it shows on-screen.

LS: Here's the thing about Cate. She knows how to wear the clothing. It didn't wear her, she wore it. And then she moved; I was quite taken in the fitting when she would kind of doing some movement to feel how the clothing felt in the way she would recline, or the way she would sit. And that would inform us about how tight we could go without being too tight or was there gonna be a problem when you foreshorten the front of your body when you sit, so that suit had to sit pretty in a very distinctive way to not buckle up. Those are all things that were really helpful from the standpoint of Cate and I working those things out in the fitting room.