Of all of the awe-inspiring technical aspects of Disney’s Andor, the costume design may be the most subtle yet successful of the critically acclaimed series. The audience basks in everything from the glamorous parties of Coruscant to the historical elegance of Chandrila to the cultured but subdued beauty of Ghorman. Costume designer Michael Wilkinson helped create whole cultures in Andor. Whether it was a whole planet or just an individual, his costumes relayed so much about the world the series inhabits. Be it hiding behind finery to manipulating one’s enemies or being ready to get into the middle of a fight, the designs he created helped the world of Andor feel alive and lived in.
Here, in an interview with The Contending, Michael Wilkinson tells us how he achieved such visual splendor.
The Contending: One of my favorite sequences this entire season was in the episode “What a Festive Evening” where you have paparazzi and these glittering hosts talking about all the people arriving. I kept having Met Gala flashbacks while watching it, and I’m curious how you went about creating that festive atmosphere?
Michael Wilkinson: There were so many I would read the scripts to Andor, and I would be so grateful to Tony Gilroy and the challenges he created for costume designs. There were so many different planets, cultures, and corners of the universe that we explored. We spent a lot of time on the planet Coruscant, what I would call the Washington DC of Star Wars. That is where all the power brokers, Senators, the movers in the shakers all live. It is a very urban, sophisticated, and edgy modern world. So we had a lot of events and parties, and among those politicians were of course Imperial officers so I had an opportunity to create what I think was a first in Star Wars, a formal dress version of the Imperial uniforms. You see them with their beautiful epaulets with their color pips as well as their braids and their bandoliers and just the formal detailing to the uniforms.
It was also a wonderful opportunity to show different characters from different galaxies all coming together. We also had over 200 extras all dressed in their finery and best evening wear. Creating all of them was a massive undertaking. I think we went to nine different planets in season two and each one’s culture had to be clearly differentiated. When you’re designing for Star Wars there’s no rental house that you can go to for all your background characters, you’re creating every bit of clothing from scratch. I think we created 5,000 different costumes for our background, and every one was thought through carefully and made in our own work room, and then all the multiples made out in factories then brought back into the workroom to be fitted and accessories made, and adding further Embellishments. It was a massive undertaking. That’s something my team and I took on with great relish.
The Contending: When you mentioned creating whole cultures for planets Ghorman was one of the big ones this season, and they are literally a planet of people who make clothing as their main export. It is what they are known for, and what I liked about their outfits was they looked classy and dignified but they were never ostentatious. I especially like seeing Syril dressed in Ghorman clothing, showing how he’s moved up but is also now caught between two worlds of Imperial and Ghorman society. What was it like creating this distinct culture?
Michael Wilkinson: I’m glad you noticed all that stuff. One of the things I love about designing for Andor is the concept of world-building. As I mentioned, we had about nine different planets to establish, each with distinct cultures. How I do that is I have very detailed discussions with production designer Luke Hull about what is this culture? What makes it different? What materials are available to them to make their clothing? What are their values? What is their language? What is important to them? What is their climate? So all of these very detailed discussions go into forming the visual world of these planets. In the case of Ghorman, it was a very proud historical culture.
As you said, they have a restrained elegance, there is nothing flashy about the Ghormans. They are not like the people of Coruscant who are trying to impress, they are very grounded. In a way they represent everything great about human culture, there’s a real solid work ethic, there is a camaraderie, and pride to them. That is what I wanted to bring across in their costuming. Why that was important was when their culture was crushed and silenced by the Empire it needed to resonate with the audience as a real tragedy. So when we made the culture of Ghorman we wanted it to be very rich and detailed, and for them we created about 500 costumes for extras and they had to be everything from workers, people who sold fabrics, people on the street, school children, police, the upper echelons of society. So it’s a very rich and diverse world we were creating.
Syril’s journey on Ghorman is particularly interesting because in season 1 he was not a very creative dresser. He is fastidious and everything is very precise and minimal. That continues at the start of season 2 with a bureaucratic corporate look representing the Imperial bureaucracy he is a part of. But when he comes to Ghorman and experiences the richness of human culture it slowly influences him and it changes his world view. You can see it in the way he dresses, wearing beautifully sharp tailored overcoats made with Ghorman silk. He experiments with velvet scarves and mufflers and wears the Ghorman beret. So being influenced by what’s around him helps tell the story of him becoming a victim of the Imperial mission that he gets caught up in, resulting in him being crushed mentally and physically in the protest.
The Contending: Luthen has two separate outfits reflecting his two main roles. There is the cultured, wealthy look he carries when he is among the upper echelons of society as a wealthy gallery owner. Then when he is among the on the ground Rebel fighters, he is still wearing very nice clothing but it is darker and more subdued. What was it like creating that dichotomy in Luthen’s outfits?
Michael Wilkinson: What I love designing about Andor is the sense that everyone has a double life. They have their true selves and the alias that they present to the world in order to carry out their mission. For Luthen, we have this very suave, sophisticated persona that he has developed on Coruscant. With his costume I wanted to present someone who is very affable, trustworthy, and feels almost harmless. This beautifully presented person that you just want to spill out all of your secrets too, which is exactly what he wants. So his clothing is beautifully tailored, lots of soft velvets and lovely deep jewel tones, a very urban creature. That contrasts a lot with what we call natural Luthen, his real persona. When he takes his wig off and you see his close cropped hair and his clothing becomes a lot more utilitarian, it has an almost quasi-military vibe to it. I especially enjoyed the chocolate brown cape that he wears when he’s skulking in the shadows of Coruscant. I really enjoyed that contrast between those two personas.
We also get the pleasure in episode 10 seeing his backstory, and see the last thirty years of his life, which was incredible. We have the shocking image of him at the beginning in an Imperial soldier uniform. Then over that episode we have five different costumes showing how he goes from this disillusioned Imperial soldier, to getting better at gathering intelligence and getting more financing until he becomes the smooth, urbane creature that we know him as Luthen of Coruscant.
The Contending: As a contrast to his journey we have Mon Mothma, who has this classic look of always being in elegant white outfits (she also has some lighter blue), but it’s always this very light coloring. By the end she is now completely with the Rebellion and wears a more utilitarian but still her classic white outfit. With the whole journey we’ve had with her, what was it like creating her outfits?
Michael Wilkinson: Yes, Mon Mothma has an incredible costume journey in season two. In the first three episodes she’s hosting this incredible three-day wedding event on Chandrila, so we spent a lot of time on her home planet, and for the first time we really get to explore that culture and what their clothing is. What I wanted to show with them was the restraint, formality, and ancient tradition of Chandrila and how she is pushing back against that. She has this very stressful existence being this poised elegant senator who is also funneling money to the Rebel Alliance, giving her this very precarious double life that puts her loved ones in incredible danger. I wanted to show strength with her architectural four-layered precise costumes, but also hint at a vulnerability. At any moment the mask could slip with her so there was always something in her clothing, whether it’s the pleating, or the softly fluttering silks that suggest a bit more vulnerability.
Then across the rest of the season I think she had about seven more costumes for when she was on Coruscant and going to those parties, giving her a huge speech at the Senate. We definitely referred back to the iterations of Mon Mothma over the 40 to 50 years of Star Wars history and the way she’s been portrayed. The cream colored costumes that she has worn, the draped chain of office that she is often seen in. I did my own interpretation of that, so that was always a constant in the way that she has been portrayed. Then when she arrives on Yavin she can put all that finery aside and become one of the people, working to drive the Rebellion forward. It was great to see her in Rogue One costume for the final episode that I was able to do my own interpretation of.
The Contending: Going to our title character Cassian Andor, he got to go through a lot more costume changes this season. The first season we mainly saw him as the rough and tumble guy or the prisoner, even when he has money he’s not dressed particularly well. This season in his spy work, he gets to be a journalist, looking very dignified. Then he gets his own form of the Ghorman look. Even at the end he’s back at being a fighter in the Yavin flight suit outfit. What was it like to get to dress him up in so many different ways?
Michael Wilkinson: I think Cassian had about 17 costume changes in season two. We got to see many different sides to Cassian. From the guy in Season one, who’s messing up a little bit working out who he is, to the final image of him walking across the tarmac on Yavin to his final mission and ultimate Star Wars hero. It was great to be able to chart that journey in season two with his various disguises, including being a very elegant fashion designer who is going to Ghorman to collect fabric swatches for his new fashion collection. It is very different to how we’ve ever seen Cassian before. He wore a tailored sleek outfit that was very minimal and urbane, with accessories, rings, tie pins, a special sunglasses visor, and sweeping cape. Then his second alias on Ghorman was him as a war correspondent. I wanted that outfit to reflect the real world of foreign correspondents that go all over the world reporting on different current affairs.
So I created a look for him of washed-out linens, leathers, and giving it a very rugged feel. Something he could be comfortable in any corner of the Galaxy reporting on events. Then when he was extracting Mon Mothma from the Senate, he was posing as a different type of journalist, someone who is very comfortable in a place like Washington DC. So that was a much more urbane look for him, and I created a very iconic sort of Star Wars trench coat for that outfit. I put a lot of work into that because I knew that that trench coat would end up on Mon Mothma as he disguises her and helps her escape. There’s a moment in the safe house where she has her beautiful ivory silken clothes covered by his trench coat and he says to her “Welcome to the Rebellion.” It is a great moment of her crossing over, leaving behind her senatorial identity and becoming a full member of the Rebel Alliance.
The Contending: Final thoughts?
Michael Wilkinson: I would like to celebrate the work of my incredible costume department crew. I had about 90 full-time members working with me, they all committed a year of their lives to creating these costumes for Andor. There was four months of prep and then a massive eight month shoot. So it was a real exercise in stamina, keeping going day after day creating intelligent, interesting, beautifully detailed costumes. As I said, I think we created about 5,000 extras costumes, and 700 costumes from scratch for the 200 named characters. It was an incredible marathon of costume building. When you think about it, there’s eight and a half hours of storytelling in Andor, which is the equivalent of four Star Wars feature films back to back. So that’s an incredible wealth of visual storytelling that my team helped me create in Pinewood Studios in England. So I’d really like to acknowledge their incredible contribution to the storytelling.
Andor streams exclusively in its entirety on Disney+.
