Interview: Kate Hawley on Crafting the Meticulous Costume Design in ‘Frankenstein’ and the Joy of Collaborating with Guillermo del Toro
There was nothing but pure joy when talking to costume designer Kate Hawley about her latest work on Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein. When you see the film you’ll discover why, as Hawley’s work, alongside the other artisans who’ve worked with del Toro on several films throughout his filmography, are delivering the best work of their careers in bringing the epic world of the Oscar-winning director’s latest fantasia to the big screen. For Hawley, who grew up in Wellington, New Zealand where she studied graphic design, earning a diploma for visual communication at the Wellington School of Design at Wellington Polytechnic before she attended the Motley Theatre Design Course in London, she’s been an accomplished costume designer for close to thirty years, making the transition from the Australian stage to the silver screen, working on films like The Lovely Bones and The Hobbit trilogy with director Peter Jackson. In this time period, she met del Toro, where the two of them worked together on his sci-fi action adventure film Pacific Rim, and Crimson Peak, one of the director’s most underrated films of his filmography, and Hawley’s best work of her career till their latest collaboration.
In Frankenstein, Hawley’s work shines through in every scene of the film’s two hour and thirty-minute run time. From the design of single characters’ like Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac), the Creature (Jacob Elordi), and Lady Elizabeth (Mia Goth), to the dozens of extras within the opening sequences in the Arctic, the hundreds of bodies laid waste due to war, or every actor in the background of pivotal scenes involving our main characters, they are all meticulous brought to life not only by del Toro and Hawley’s marvelous attention to detail, but the entire team Hawley assembled to craft every single piece of clothing we see on screen. In my review of the film out of Telluride, I spoke briefly about the “luscious” work Hawley created and how Frankenstein as a whole is “an embarrassment of riches from every craft department working on this massive project.”
In my conversation with Hawley at the 2025 Middleburg Film Festival, we talked about getting the call from del Toro to reunite on Frankenstein, her connection to the original source material, the challenges she faced within the evolving natural elements when on set, as well as what it was like to collaborate with all the other department heads in making del Toro’s vision come to life. We also spoke about individual looks she created for the characters, how they mirrored each other, and how everything you see on screen was handmade, put together stitch by stitch by her unbelievably talented crew. When the conversation was over, as we were sitting outside on a couch in the back of the Salamander Hotel on a chilly Saturday morning, Hawley got emotional when talking about del Toro and the project being released out into the world, in theaters now and on Netflix later this month. It was a moment of reflection on all the hard work she, del Toro, and the entire Frankenstein team did, and how just like every other film, it’s no longer theirs now, it’s the audience’s film as everyone around the world sees it. It was also a reminder of the love, joy, and passion someone like Hawley has for her work, and as the tears went away and a big smile came to her face, so did the excitement of the next project (whatever that may be) and how the next chapter of her career is on the horizon, waiting for her to knock it out of the park like she’s done so many times before.
Ryan McQuade: Thank you for sitting down with me. I’ve seen the film a couple of times, and I love how personal everything feels for Guillermo (del Toro) right now. I know you’ve worked with him before, and know you’ll say yes to anything. But when he says he’s going to do Frankenstein, what’s the first thought that runs in your head?
Kate Hawley: That you put off work, you turn down projects as long as you possibly can to survive, and then you wait for him. I remember it’s like, “Are we ready yet?” And he’d go, “Nearly, we’re going to start soon. Nearly.” And then so I just kept making myself available, because I think as sort of, I don’t want to call myself an artist, but as someone who is passionate about it, to be on that journey was everything, really. I don’t want to miss out. And it brings… One of those feeds you for a long time, and I needed the brain food and I needed the soul food. Yeah.
RM: Well, when you read it, what were your thoughts of the script?
KH: Tears. Well, it is always a good cry. I think the thing is, he’d taken all the elements that felt familiar and all the themes from the novel, but had made it his own. And that was overwhelming, and still that wonderful tone of melancholy, and then this giant sense of mythology behind it, and that. All those things were there. And there were so many, it was just rich, deep and rich.
And I felt the translation into, for example, the newer period and that, it still worked on a gothic sensibility, which was at the beginning sort of a sort of mindset, but it’s all in the text. And my job, as a designer, is to follow the vision of my director and respond to the text. They’re my two masters. That’s my job.
RM: Do you have a personal relationship with the original text itself, because it feels like a lot of people in this film have, not just with Guillermo, a relationship with this text?
KH: Yes, absolutely. And I think for me, I love so many aspects of the story, but I also really respond to that loneliness, and the tone and role of nature within it.
And I actually even choose to live in a very remote area of New Zealand, because nature’s so evocative and stimulating, and inspiring in itself. And I think I’ve always kept… There’s such an environment and atmosphere created by it, and I’m interested in that, and how clothes can also create that sensibility.
But I certainly had a relationship with that, and I was very familiar. Something that maybe we shared when I had my bookshelf that Guillermo looked at the works of (Henry) Fuseli and Casper David Friedrich and Caravaggio and that. So, all of it, I’d had very much a similar experience of having referenced Mary Shelley and the world of Byron, all of that world. It’s a wonderful, fascinating world.
RM: Well, having that world is a great reference point to then jump into the work, because when you read off the page, the other thing I would think it’s like, “Wow, this is going to be a lot. This is expansive, this is epic.” And you’re also like, “This is wonderful and poetic, but then also-
KH: You’re frightened that you’re going to shit yourself, literally. (both laugh). No, it was, and then when you do the practical stuff, like a breakdown, you go, “Oh, my God.” There’s so many different elements that are completely different worlds on their own.
So, we have in Guillermo’s version, we cross from the Arctic and the sailors, and then we’re in the Crimean battlefield that we created all the uniforms for. And then we’re in Edinburgh and London, and in costume balls and in prisons. Everything has its own unique world that has to be created.
And I think jokingly in the calendar, our supervisor put the month of tears, which then got extended to three or four months.
But I was talking about it with Renee, my assistant, who’s been wonderful, and I am grateful to my team, that we had such a strong team to be able to be clever in our thinking, and how we approached it, so the scale didn’t become overwhelming and there was still joy in it every day. So, even though it was a giant mountain, there was still much joy in the process of it.
Again, it comes back to working with Guillermo. How often is one given a chance to do a project like this?
RM: Was there a specific aspect of those different locations, or different stages within the story that you found to be the most challenging, difficult to make?
KH: They all had their own, yeah. Part of it was when we started in Toronto and then up in North Bay on the ice and that, we were starting, really, and really with the grit and the skeleton of the film. It was all the lab stuff. It was the battlefields, it was the ice and the snow, and it was technically trying to create all those costumes and then get them made. So, we had to send people out all over the place to do it.
But I think it’s technically challenging, but the answer was more about always looking at the world that you’re creating. And I don’t work in isolation. I have Tamara (Deverell) as Production Designer, and Dan (Laustsen) and Mike (Hill), and all of that. So, you’re always stimulated and balanced by what everybody else is doing.
It’s always really challenging for everybody working in film now, but I think it’s the communication and the collaboration that make it work. But there were volumes. There were a lot of numbers in a big way, and then there were not many repeats of anything. There were a lot of individual makes.
RM: Well, speaking of individuals, because I want to talk about some of these characters and their designs, because I saw some of the sketches already from just your original concepts and conversations with Guillermo, and then what we see in the film. And I wanted to start with Oscar (Isaac) as Victor.
KH: Yes.
RM: I think one of the first stills we ever saw of him was in that black coat and that wonderful hat, and in the pinstripes.
KH: Oh, yeah. Oh, is that the one that came online and everyone freaked out?
RM: And everybody freaked. No, but I didn’t freak out. I was like, “Yes, please. This is what I want to see.”
KH: It is totally Guillermo.
RM: It is. I’m like, “That’s totally him.” Could you talk a little bit about creating Victor’s look, and what your inspirations were for Oscar’s outfit when we first meet him?
KH: Absolutely. Well, there were lots of conversations, and obviously the conversation started with Guillermo, and he said he wanted him to look like a rock star and he wanted that sort of sixties vibe, because we’d been talking about the colors of Hammer horror and all of that world. So, I think it was a natural way of evolving that.
But actually when I was looking at the silhouettes of the period, it wasn’t too hard to make those work. And when you look at the sixties, and obviously there’s the Carnaby Street reference, but the sort of velvet, bohemian aristocrat keeps reinventing itself through different time periods.
So, he could be Lord Byron, he could be Mick Jagger, he could be all of these things. And one of the starting places was one of the first scenes, not the one that you saw, but one of the first scenes we actually shot was the medical lecture theater. And Guillermo described him as David Bowie walking onto set.
Like the thin white Duke. And then Oscar brought the sort of bravado of Prince to that. And so it was a lot about performance, but then the clothes and textures that we built, I looked at not only as past references like our Lord Byron and that, but I also looked at Rudolph Nureyev in his Parisian apartment. And I looked at Damien Hirst and Picasso, and all of them sort of successful artists, and had money and privilege, or in Byron’s case, an aristocrat.
And then Victor at the beginning, we said he’s at the bottom of his luck. The thread, bare in a way, doesn’t have the money behind him until he meets Harlander. And then a new wardrobe comes with the money of his patron. And he enjoys it.
RM: There’s a transition of class there.
KH: Absolutely, and enjoys beautiful things, but taking also that sort of someone who’s only focused on his muse and this creation, we explored that idea, in terms of the creation scene itself.
Guillermo talked about it like a long labor, that this took place over days, and it really felt important. There wasn’t a mad scientist’s outfit that I’m going to go down to the lab and put on my work gear. It’s like I leap out of bed naked, and because I have an idea, I go downstairs in my dressing gown. I have an idea. I wear the same pants day in and day out, because it’s about the idea. It doesn’t matter what happens to these clothes.
And there’s a sort of irreverence and sort of charm to the way Oscar wears his clothes. And his physicality really extends what we did. And we had lots and lots of fittings, and Guillermo was part of them and Oscar, and then there’s Oscar’s children. Everybody came to those fittings, but it was about finding moments.
And because Oscar, he was such a joy, and the way we worked together, he could find moments for garments. So, we knew what the rules of Victor were within it. And that extended to makeup, and Tim Nolan who did the hair. There were lots of transitions.
Oscar himself is kind of phenomenal, in that he transitions from the beauty of youth to age. He becomes beautiful and ugly. He becomes the creature. So, another big act, not just the bohemian sort of eccentricity of a privileged man, but it was also the main thing reflecting the creature’s journey, but in opposite.
So, in a way, we started at the end in the ice, and Oscar’s character, Victor, becomes more like the creature. He’s lost his leg, he has a prosthetic, he’s got a broken nose, he’s wearing fucked up boots at this point. Whatever we wanted to swap in for that. And the creature himself becomes more noble and has eloquence and vocabulary.
So, they very much had to mirror, in the conversations, what they were wearing and echo that everywhere. And you see this in Guillermo’s use of mirrors, and in the architecture. So, everywhere, we’re reflecting, repeating imagery.
RM: Yeah, and the inverse of Victor is the creature. And when we first see… I mean, talk about collaboration. You’re having to work with this impressive makeup design-
KH: Genius.
RM: -on Jacob (Elordi). But then I think what’s so great about your costume design with the creature, is as he’s evolving knowledge-wise, he’s adding layers of clothes and humanity to him.
KH: Absolutely.
RM: And so could you talk a little bit about just starting with the wrappings and bandages, and then building from this cloak, to then the full-on outfit that we see him when he’s confronting Victor in the third act on the ice?
KH: Yeah. Well, the creature’s creation and birth itself, when he’s wrapped in the bandages, is almost like a Christ-like figure.
And then his first experience landing on the shore, he comes across. Again, another nod to the sort of Crimean battlefield where the bodies were sourced from. There’s the skeletons of soldiers. And the coat we created for that, it was almost like the memory of the soldier before, and the way the clothes had sort of grown into the skeleton as it decomposed. It was almost like he was picking up the skin and skeleton of another man, and putting them on.
There’s beautiful stuff in Guillermo’s script about memories, and all of that. And it felt like we repeated that imagery a bit with Elizabeth, but we did that differently with the creature, that he puts on this coat and it’s another shell.
And Guillermo always asked me to look, work from the inside out. And that was very much a part of our process with Mike, looking at how he was sculpting and the mark making he was doing of the character, all that beautiful fusing, and the vertebrae and that.
So, it was a matter of sort of drawing that through the clothes themselves, so that we’re always aware of the creature. And when he comes to the mill, and the hermit’s cottage, that’s the first time he experienced warmth and love in the gift of clothing. That was the first sort of instinctive thing to protect and give. And that’s his first experience of having any kindness shown to him.
So, all those simple layers from the peasants that he got from that point. And then there was, in some ways, how we shifted that when he comes to the wedding, he’s almost like a noble prince. It’s almost his wedding. Guillermo wanted a very kind of heroic sort of figure for that.
And there’s so many iterations as we go through the act, huge iterations of all these layers that he’s wrapped in. Working again with Mike, this creature uses dynamite and explosions, and falls into the ice and into the water.
So, there was a huge amount of work and coordination, because the clothing made the difference to how long Jake was sitting in that makeup chair. That was the big one. So, again, it’s about how you collaborate and help each other, and work through. So, there was a huge amount of work.
And I remember my poor standby, Raymond, had to actually carry the creature’s coat on a stand on wheels, because it was quite heavy at some points. And then we had to make iterations that were sort of within our department. We used textiles a lot to try and create fake versions of it. But there was a huge team just on the creature itself.
RM: You mentioned mirroring earlier, and I wondered about the relationship between Victor’s mother and Elizabeth?
KH: Absolutely.
RM: And the way we see their first introductions on screen. But because we see them through these veils, these beautiful, gorgeous, long extended veils; Victor’s mother the red veil in the wind at the beginning, but then with Elizabeth, she’s surrounded with this almost turquoise colored veil.
KH: Greeny, absolutely.
RM: So, could you talk about the mirroring of those two characters, because that’s the person that unconditionally loved Victor, that he loses, and then this is the ray of light of love that he finds, and is the spark of inspiration for his project?
KH: Well, Guillermo’s main imagery and the way he works is in circles. And that’s present within the architecture, so I’m always echoing that. And when we see… I guess it comes back to, I think it’s the creature who, and I can’t quote this properly, but he talks about memories of men. I feel I remember other memories. And I think the way we see Claire, Victor’s mother, is through his eyes, again as a memory. It’s a distant voice of the past.
Do you remember, I don’t know if you remember being picked up as a child, and taken back into the house or up to your bed, and carried by your parents, and all you remember is the voice and things? And so I think women in this world are very much through that sort of memory of it. And Elizabeth becomes, or Mia and those characters become lots of different memories of women.
So, there’s the distant mother figure, there’s the Madonna, there’s all these iterations, and we echo that image in red, which is almost like a visceral line of blood. Guillermo used that in the Devil’s Backbone with that beautiful ghost boy child. And sort of echoes that.
And then with the death of Claire in the coffin, that’s echoed in the architecture of the coffin, is echoed within the bonnet of Elizabeth, and Victor’s apartment. The red stain on the bridal dress at the end brings us back full circle to Claire at the beginning.
And at the end of that, Elizabeth reflects more the creature than Victor. So, the bridal garment itself is almost like the inside out of a skeleton, the ribcage, and that echoes the creature’s creation. So, she’s much more in line with him, in terms of language.
RM No, for sure. She feels more connected with him by the end.
KH: Absolutely. Another important detail are the gloves, the bit when Victor peels his gloves off, the creature takes her gloves off.
RM: And the gloves are an important thing as well, because it reflects the differences in human connection.
KH: Absolutely. Absolutely. And even the sort of flaying of skin. Gloves are kind of wonderful like that, because it depends on the fit and cut and detail of them. And we use more transparent gloves for Elizabeth and Harlander’s are almost like a waxy tan that feels like automata.
RM: Because he’s got this kind of coldness to him. But then he’s also holding a secret. And yet he’s this decadent man. I mean, he’s got, was it, a fox that’s on his shoulders at one point?
KH: Yes. And catnip for Christoph (Waltz). He loved it. “Oh, my mother had one of those.” And I was sort of, “Oh.” And there was almost that restraint. We even built corsets and that for him, that sort of idea of holding someone in. And with Harlander, all of these characters are versions of Guillermo, really. Harlander, the great collector, and all of them are iterations of him. But there was a lot of experimentation with Harlander’s character. And we ended up with something quite distilled, and more restrained than the other images.
But we’d gone through that whole thing of looking at the corsets, and playing with the idea of the syphilis and how you hide that. Was it a wig? Or how elaborate it was. And that’s part of, again, a collaboration with hair and make-up. It’s a huge part.
In a way, my job’s one aspect, but until the other elements with hair and make-up, Tim with Oscar, Kerner with Mia, and then going into the sets, it’s all about letting everybody help complete the picture. I always have a vision of where we are going with Guillermo.
RM: You’re talking about elements of the other departments, but you literally are dealing with the elements?
KH: Yes, literally. Literally. (both laugh)
RM: You’re in the-
KH: Rain.
RM: The snow-
KH: Mud, blood.
RM: Everything. You’re in a literal war at one point.
KH: It’s okay. I know my devil now. Guillermo, he always does this to me. I go, “Wouldn’t it be lovely for lots of silk?” And then we are reminded that we go through.
RM: How did you embrace all of those challenges when crafting your work?
KH: Well, at the very beginning we’d had that writers’ and actors’ strike. So, you have all the time in the world, and then you have three weeks to do everything. Standard now.
And we had huge amounts of stunts, so we were doing period costumes, but we had to do, say, 70 repeats for some of those actor’s costumes and those scenes. And think cleverly about what elements we had to change up, in terms of skirts and shrinkage, or stunts with Victor’s character, scales, stunts, all of this sort of work had to be done. It was another huge part of the operation. So, we had to build that in-house, and then get those sent out for all the repeats so that we could make it, really.
And also just sort of what happens to the fabrics and the color. color is such a major part of Guillermo’s storytelling. How do we retain the intensity through all that? Even the challenge, not just mud, blood and snow, but with lighting. And there was a lot of single source lighting, a lot of candle work. And the candle light, I remember doing lots and lots of tests, camera tests with candle light. And in the end, we set up with Dan, lights in the wardrobe department so that some of these fabrics we tested for weeks on end to try and get the color intensity.
And I tried to work out as much as I could humanly possible, what was going to happen on set, because you just can’t get there and it is not what Guillermo wants. And so I did a lot of work, testing within my department. We tested fabrics, textiles, everything as we went along. Planning for weeks in advance.
RM: The number one thing that I’ve talked to every single person that’s worked with Guillermo is that his attention to detail he has-
KH: Phenomenal.
RM: And the vibrancy within the work, and working in the practical, but also how much of a joy it is to work with him. Could you talk about your collaboration from the moment you started working with him, and how it’s evolved from film to film, where now you’re just going to drop at a hat at the next thing he says, because it feels right when you find someone that speaks your creative language like Guillermo does.
KH: It’s just so exciting. It’s absolutely like taking your clothes off. Not quite like that. I mean, no, I’m not like that with Guillermo at all. But it is like once you understand the language, I mean, he still surprises you. You think you’ve got, “Oh, I’ve got a great idea.” And then he’ll go, “But what about we do this?”
I think it’s just sort of sometimes there are moments when you’re running, and you’ll go, “I need this.” And you might go, “Oh, do we?” And then you do it, and then you realize how it fits into the whole frame.
But what was amazing about this, especially since Crimson Peak was the last one I worked with him on, and just literally he’d be editing on set as we went. He shared so much in a way that I hadn’t had the privilege of before. “Come and see what I’m doing. Come and watch the edit. The door’s open every day.” There’s no excuse not to be in step with him.
He was part of the process every way. I could knock on the door, share an idea, get his input, feedback, and go back. And even when the production was running, we knew we could all meet on set early in the morning and get information. He’d come to our department, and we’d work through the color boards together.
In my department, I always put up what everyone’s doing, what Tamara is doing, everyone, because I want my team to know exactly the vision that Guillermo’s got, and where we’re going.
And he comes through and he’ll spend time at every table, and look at the work and appreciate it. And it’s just a wonderful dialogue all the time. And he is a man that knows color more than any person I know. He understands color in a way that’s really complex, so that’s a wonderful part of the process.
Sometimes he’ll change things, but it’ll always be a better idea. There’s that very natural work. He’s always got a very strong vision of where he is going. But, of course, the process when you have actors and that is more organic and things are discovered through rehearsal. Still in his vision, but sometimes he’ll go, “Oh, now I don’t think that idea works anymore. Let’s do this.” But it’s always better.
And then when you see what he’s doing with other departments. I’ll walk on set and see the result of his discussions with Tamara or Dan, and that, there’s huge joy in being part of that. Huge joy.
RM: It’s phenomenal work. Thank you so much for your time, Kate.
KH: Pleasure, Ryan. Absolute pleasure.
Frankenstein is currently in select theaters and will be on Netflix November 7.
- Director Watch Podcast Ep. 129 – ‘White Material’ (Claire Denis, 2008) - December 6, 2025
- Ethan Hawke on How It Was the Right Time To Make ‘Blue Moon’ with Director Richard Linklater [VIDEO INTERVIEW] - December 2, 2025
- Jeremy Allen White on the Responsibility and Hard Work Needed to Transform into The Boss in ‘Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere’ [VIDEO INTERVIEW] - December 1, 2025
Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA) Awards [Updating Live] 
International Documentary Association Awards: ‘The Tale of Silyan’ Wins Top Prize 
Oscars: 68 Original Songs, 135 Original Scores are Eligible for the 98th Academy Awards 
Washington DC Area Film Critics Association (WAFCA) Nominations: ‘One Battle After Another,’ ‘Sinners’ Score 13 Each