Last month Jacqueline West garnered a Costume Designers Guild Award nomination for her work on Dune: Part 2 (Warner Bros. Pictures). The recognition underscored that West met the high bar she set with Dune: Part One, for which the five-time Oscar nominee won the Costume Designers Guild Award in 2022. West summed up her philosophical approach to both installments of Dune–directed by Denis Villeneuve–with a self-coined word, “modieval,” a coming together of “modern” and “medieval.”
West explained that when Villeneuve first reached out to her to take on Dune–doing justice to Frank Herbert’s seminal novel–she replied, “I don’t do sci-fi.” He in turn immediately said, “That’s why I want you.”
West noted that Villeneuve wanted “something grounded in reality but not urban cool. He wanted something really timeless.” She thus gravitated to a medieval foundation–tapping into paintings and tapestries of the era for inspiration and to convey the beginning of a new world, giving it an age-old feel but very much with a contemporary relevance, a sense of being now.
West recalled reading an interview with “Dune” author Herbert in which he observed that to look at the distant future, you need to look at the far past. In that spirit, for both Dune films, West shared that she “really went to the past to figure out the future.”
West added that she was also heavily reliant on Villeneuve, gauging his reactions to costumes and how they help define the characters. “I deferred to him,” she said, explaining that Villeneuve, an unabashed fan of the “Dune” novel, has lived with this story since he was 12 years old. “He has a vision about ‘Dune’ that served as a driving force” for the films.
West and Villeneuve worked together on defining the characters extensively before the actors arrived. Wardrobe would be displayed on her assistants, their assistants, and mannequins in environments with such elements as walls painted by concept artists, Moroccan music, even the deployment of a wind machine–all put in place for Villeneuve to review and provide feedback. This all played a part in character development as West worked from the inside out, starting with characters and from that building their costumes.
West also found inspiration in the work of production designer Patrice Vermette, who won an Oscar for Dune: Part One. She described the Arrakis castle palace he designed as awe-inspiring–constructed on two sound stages connected into one enormous stage. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” said West who was creatively spurred on to mesh her work with that of Vermette. His vaulted rooms had a medieval feeling, for example, dovetailing with the medieval aspects that West embraced for her costume design to tell the Dune saga.
Sheer volume was also part of the challenge. West turned out 2,000-plus costumes for Part One. But even more ambitious world creation in Part Two upped that tally to some 4,000 costumes.
West, who at the outset of her Dune journey, told Villeneuve that she didn’t do science fiction, ironically observed that her experience on the two films proved that she can handle that genre. She got “deeper and deeper” into the different planets of Dune, became enamored with costuming for the future based on the past. “I had never done sci-fi or any kind of superhero film other than The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” related West who said that Part One carried lessons for her in such areas as making armor, and how to work with visual effects houses. “I wasn’t versed in all of that [for Part One]. Then I went into Part Two with a lot more confidence,” she noted, particularly in how she could contribute to building different planets and worlds, how armor has to work and be wearable, accommodating stunts while providing comfort. Her growth and experience, she observed, was akin to starting “softly in a symphony” which became “a huge orchestral roar by the end.”
Another major takeaway from the Dune experience for West was seeing varied creative, diverse entities come together so wonderfully. She cited visual effects houses in London, the U.S. and Italy creating and bringing worlds together. And the multinational crews themselves represented a coming together of worlds—British, American, Italian, Spanish, German and Hungarian crew members, among others. They all blended to help create worlds. It was world creation through a mixing of worlds, she observed.
West’s alluded to five Oscar nominations were for Dune: Part One in 2022 (shared with Bob Morgan), the Philip Kaufman-directed Quills in 2001, David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button in 2009, Alejandro Inarritu’s The Revenant in 2016, and last year for Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon.
West has seven career Costume Designers Guild Award nominations. In addition to her nods for Dune: Part One and Dune: Part Two, West was nominated for Quills, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Fincher’s The Social Network in 2011, Ben Affleck’s Argo in 2013, and Killers of the Flower Moon.
This is the 10th installment of our weekly 16-part The Road To Oscar Series of feature stories. Nominations for the 97th Academy Awards will be announced on Friday, January 17. The 97th Oscars will be held on Sunday, March 2.
