“Infamous,” the latest film about Truman Capote, which opens today, explores much of the same terrain as “Capote,” released last year. The author (in “Infamous,” played by Toby Jones) convinces his pal Nell Harper Lee to accompany him to Holcomb, Kan., where he charms the town into giving him the scoop on the family of four who were brutally murdered and witnesses the death of the convicted killers in preparation for writing “In Cold Blood.”
The difference between the two films, though, is that “Infamous” gives significantly more screen time — and wardrobe — to Capote’s dear “swans,” the Park Avenue socialites he so famously befriended and eventually betrayed.
“They dressed with imagination, they dressed with style,” costume designer Ruth Myers says of the socials. “They didn’t have anything else to do.” For Myers, who has worked with “Infamous” director Douglas McGrath on all his films, this assignment was a dream come true. “I’m English, but I’ve been living in America for the last 30 years, and the Camelot-Kennedy era has always been incredibly fascinating to me,” says Myers.
Between fittings for her next film, a fantasy piece titled “His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass” starring Nicole Kidman, Myers discussed her inspiration and methods for escorting the swans from the Upper East Side to the silver screen.
On Babe Paley (played by Sigourney Weaver): “Sigourney knew Babe Paley, so we both knew the sort of polish and innate elegance that we were aiming for, and we played with it a bit. I think that the Babe Paley character is slightly more frivolous than Babe Paley ever was, because I think we both wanted to pull that bit out of her character.
“I didn’t have much time or much money on this film, so there was a lot of vintage buying. For instance, the first time you see Babe in that beautiful satin coat and dress — that was an existing coat that we dyed and matched the dress to, recut and put the maribou around.”On Slim Keith (played by Hope Davis): “Slim Keith was married to Howard Hawks, who was the director who discovered Lauren Bacall. So all those early references of Lauren Bacall looking incredibly chic but slightly out of fashion — well, totally her own fashion — were modeled after Slim. I think she’s in that long tradition of Lauren Bacall and Katharine Hepburn, people who made their own style who probably would not go to the couture shows but who would take what they liked, make it into a style and use it.”On Marella Agnelli (played by Isabella Rossellini): “Isabella knew the Agnellis. She actually told me a wonderful story about her mother going for lunch with Marella Agnelli, and her mother, who was not known to like clothes at all, put all her jewels and her best clothes on to go have lunch with Marella. She came back and said, ‘I felt suburban.’ You know, this is Ingrid Bergman! We knew we were dealing with a woman who was ridiculously and absurdly chic. And Isabella was a model, so what I put on her I could not have put on a normal actress. She absolutely knew how to wear the clothes.”On Diana Vreeland (played by Juliet Stevenson): “It was an incredible leap for Juliet. This is nothing like anything she’s ever done in her life. When you read Diana Vreeland’s biography, you get an enormous sense of what she wore. Although there was a lot of documentation, I chose more to obsess on the written word and try to take out of that what I thought would work. For instance, she was the first person in fashion to really wear flat sandals, which she found in Capri. So I had to put Juliet’s feet on the sofa in one scene because she was wearing those, and she desperately wanted them to be seen.”