An Oral History Of Christopher Nolan’s ‘Inception’ Part 2: The Costumes

“Inception...is it possible?”

When he was chosen to create the costumes for 2010’s Inception, Jeffrey Kurland (Erin Brockovich, Mission: Impossible - Fallout) had no way of knowing the complexity of the project or that the film would spawn a fruitful partnership between him and writer-director Christopher Nolan. The pair eventually went on to make Dunkirk (2017) and Tenet (still in pandemic limbo), but it was their shared journey into the human mind that forged them into kings of the summer blockbuster.

Part 1 of my oral history on Inception covered the musical aspect of the mind-bending movie. In Part 2, Mr. Kurland details how he navigated the various levels of Nolan’s screenplay to dress each member of the dream burgling team: leader Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio); right-hand man Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt); architect Ariadne (Ellen Page); forger Eames (Tom Hardy); chemist Yusuf (Dileep Rao); and financier Saito (Ken Watanabe).

Instead of stealing an idea, the group is tasked with planting one in the mind of Saito’s business competitor, Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy). Their mission becomes all the more challenging when deadly memories of Cobb’s late wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard), start to get in the way.

Kurland and I also covered more minor characters played by Tom Berenger (“Peter Browning”), Lukas Haas (“Nash”), Michael Caine (“Professor Stephen Miles”), and the projections (background characters in any given dream).

While Inception is set in a future where dream-sharing technology exists, the costumes helped the finished product feel both grounded and timeless.

Josh Weiss: What did you think of Inception’s premise when you first read the script?

Jeffrey Kurland: My initial impression of the story was, ‘Whoah!’ This is the most convoluted story I think I’ve ever had to break down. It took many reads before I could actually sit down with Chris and talk about it to understand it. It’s so in-depth and there’s so much to it. There’s nothing surface about Inception, everything goes deep down and comes right back up at you. It was a very complicated breakdown and obviously, a complicated movie to make. But once I got the idea in my head, I just started going from there and Chris and I had many great conversations about it.

JW: How did you go about defining the look of the costumes?

JK: We knew that we didn’t want to date it. We didn’t want to go futuristic, that was not going to serve our purposes. Inception is a movie that I hoped ... in 20 years, you could watch it and it would not date itself visually. That you would look at it and accept it for what it is. It has overtones of the future, but that’s within the storyline and within the practically of it. It is not laid down upon it, but stylistically, it has a futuristic feel without going into heavy futurism.

JW: What kind of input did Chris give you?

JK: I’ve worked with him three times now and he’s so fantastic in the way that he presents an original story off-script; it’s always interesting in one way or another. Obviously, Inception is extremely interesting, but we talked about character as far as he saw [when] he wrote it: ‘Who Ariadne might be? Who is Cobb? Who is Mal?’

Individually, we went through every character as it’s scripted and just talked about them. Who they were, where they came from, what their background might be. Then I went and started drawing and presented sketches, drawings, and such. We’d look at that and talk about it and he’d point out one thing or another that he liked, didn’t like, thought was almost there, what might change. Then another meeting ensued, I’d come back with changes and that’s how it went on until it trickled down to what we eventually ended up with.

JW: Going off that, I was curious if you could do a short breakdown of the looks for each character...?

COBB: Dom is at the top of the pyramid. Stylistically, everything in my mind falls down from him. He’s presented as the every man of the group and then everybody else trickles down within their own character, but within that same stylistic milieu that he’s in. They all look like a cohesive group, yet extremely individual … 

If I started him in a T-shirt and a pair of jeans, I’d have no place to go. I had to — with Chris — decide, ‘What were his financial circumstances? What do we want to present him as?’ There is a successful business man quality to him and you wanted to see that. It’s, shall we say, conservative, but not without style — it definitely has style.

In a color wheel, you have a neutral [color], so Cobb is the neutral from which everything else could be blended and built.

ARTHUR: Arthur is a far more conservative kind of guy. You also have to understand, each character, at some point, becomes an architect of a dream. And so, their dream should then tie into who they are and their personality, which then, of course, ties in with their clothing ... Arthur is far more conservative with suits and ties. Usually three-piece suits that are very nicely tailored, but more on the English side of tailoring than the French or Italian side.

ARIADNE: I was dressing a physically diminutive person. Not in personality, but in physicality and I wanted to stress that because I thought that that difference between her physicality and the rest of the group was really good and really major. So, I kept her a little more casual and tomboy-ish, but obviously her look changes for whatever dream she may end up in. When you see her in the lobby of the hotel [in the second dream level], she’s in her suit. That’s Arthur’s architecture and that’s Arthur’s idea, so that’s what I perceive him thinking what Ariadne would go to. 

SAITO: Ken’s look is the ultimate successful, very wealthy businessman. Someone who has the power, someone who controls. [His suits] are double-breasted … very, very beautifully tailored — very sleek, but powerful.

EAMES: My immediate reaction to him in reading the script several times was like an ex-pat. He’s very individual in his look and who he is and his opinion. But in his dress as a human, as a character, you see him at the bar and that’s who he is, just featuring his individuality. He’s wearing it on his sleeve — literally and figuratively. You see him in that shot when the camera backs up and you see the socks. He is definitely an individual, and it was great fun to do that. When he was in the dream, he was dressed appropriately for the dream, but in his own way.

YUSUF: We’re in a foreign country [Mombassa], we’re trying to feature who this person is. He’s obviously not of the same world, necessarily, as the rest of the guys and I wanted to create that world within his wardrobe. He’s got very textured [pieces that] are a bit worn, a little shoddy. Obviously, he’s making it through and that’s kind of where we were with him.

MAL: The mystery character, the person that you meet, but never really meet. That’s who Mal is. In the dream, she is always Mal, but she’s always featured as the person that [conforms to] whomever the architect is of the dream. She takes on the look of the dream or flashback she happens to be in. As it goes on, you [have to know] the difference between ‘What is a flashback?’ and ‘What is a dream?’ ... We just had great fun in fittings and dealing with things and tweaking things here and there. Just to make that character come to life.

FISCHER: Cillian is a character who’s quite wealthy and obviously, [you have] the age difference. I definitely wanted to feature that. There’s definitely a difference in there, where Cillian is the son of the wealthy man who is dying [played by the late Pete Postlethwaite]. I wanted to separate him, [make] him a little younger than Ken would be. Yet obviously, he’s very, very wealthy and his suits and clothing — although traditional — are very elegant, but conservative in look. It’s as if he was emulating his father.

BROWNING: He was, shall we say, not as wealthy, not as elegantly set out. But by no means shoddy. He’s quite well-dressed, but not as pristine and beautifully-tailored as Cillian’s character.

MILES: He is professorial, but he is an architect. That was his job. I wanted very much to show that. I researched many English architects of the period and the time to see what their looks were. I came to his costume by going through all that research and then putting it on Michael, so that it looked real and comfortable on him. Again, a lot of texture, a lot of individual touches. The nehru collar on the shirt, the collarless shirt, the kind of nubbly jacket, and such, so that he had some gravitas in his look.

NASH: Lukas Haas’s character is kind of a…I hate to say a minor character because he’s not … it’s got to make an impact right then and there because you don’t have two hours to explain to the world the nuances of this character. So, it’s done with a certain amount of simplicity and aging. He obviously isn’t a wealthy person, he’s very individual as to what he does and who he is.

PROJECTIONS: For each dream, you had to create the look of a scene sartorially on all the extras when everybody else is around. You follow the lead of the story. You also had to pay attention to who the architect of the dream was and what [their] taste level was. That influenced the way it looked.

So if Arthur was the architect, it would have a bit of a conservative look to it; it would have a more precise, crisp look to it as opposed to if the architect was Eames. That [would lend] a laissez-faire to it; a little more kind of imagination to it. The dream in the castle [at the very beginning], which then goes to the riots, switches from being Arthur’s dream to being Nash’s dream and you see the quality and textural look of the dream changes from architect-to-architect. That had to be taken into account.

JW: What was your system for keeping track of everything?

JK: We broke down the script in such a way that separated: ‘What is a dream? What is a flashback? What is reality?’ Then we broke it down according to what took place on land, what took place in water, what took place in the air. It broke down in so many different ways, but you have to do that, not just for the style and look of the picture, but also for the practicality of putting it together. It was very complicated breakdown, but it served us very well ... I wanted everybody to have an individual look, but like I told you before, it needed to be cohesive and when they were all together, you had to look at them as a band of brothers, achieving what they needed to achieve.

JW: Was everything custom made?

All the suits and shirts and ties — everything was made individually for each piece because I didn’t want to depend on the marketplace to make decisions for what this movie was going to look like as far as texture and color and style. You have two women, but mostly men and you want them to each have an individual look, yet still be normalized. You don’t want anybody [to look] like they’re from another movie. 

Designing them and choosing all the fabrics and all the colors was very important. The palette was very important, to follow that palette with [production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas] in each set and each place, so that it made sense; so that there was a cohesive look to the entire thing, which I think we achieved.

JW: Can you elaborate on the importance of color and the palettes you chose?

JK: Each character has a color palette of their own. Either a cool look or a warm look, a patterned look, a textured look. All those things come into play and each character calls out for certain things that need to be there as far as that’s concerned. 

You look at Tom Hardy’s character, who is far more free with color and texture than Saito would be. Saito is much more conservative and very beautifully done with pinstripes. But he’s different from Arthur, who is much less grand, but very conservatively put together. With each one, a decision was made to go in a certain direction, color-wise. But then you’ve got to know that when they all come together, you don’t want anything popping out and jarring unless it’s story-driven.

JW: How did you maintain secrecy during the shoot?

JK: Outside of the people who are making the film, you don’t talk about. My family had no idea what Inception was about until they went and saw the movie when it came out ... If you went to a vendor, you didn’t say the name of the movie and you didn’t say what you were doing. You said, ‘This is what I need’ and no questions asked. You just never talk about and if people would ask what I was doing, I would say, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t say.’ That was the easiest way to deal with it. It’s military, it’s mum’s the word. The entire crew knows to not talk about it. There is no social media shared with this, that’s it.

JW: Do you have an interpretation of the film’s ending?

JK: To be honest with you, I don’t. I really don’t. I go with Chris on that. If the top is spinning, the top is spinning. The movie cuts off, the top is spinning, that’s where I’m going. I always go with Chris, it’s always the smartest way to go and it’s usually the most satisfying.

JW: This was your first collaboration with Christopher Nolan. What would you say you learned about him as a director?

JK: He’s a fantastic storyteller and he’s got an incredibly facile mind for all sorts of things. Chris can wax eloquent on books of all sorts and still talk to you about 1970s television. He’s so inquisitive and so knowledgable about so many things that he brings to his scripts. It’s just a learning curve and you’re lucky to be on with him because there just aren’t a lot of directors out there like Chris. You always know with Chris that you’re doing something special.

Inception was my first one and it was special. And they continued to be special: Dunkirk and then Tenet, which I can’t talk about. Each one is a joy and a privilege to collaborate on ... I really can’t wait for [Tenet] to be released and for people to see it. I believe it’s really enjoyable ... Chris is an original. If there’s anyone who can be called that, he is an original.

JW: No spoilers, but would you say your work on Tenet was similar to your experience on Inception?

JK: Working with Chris Nolan, every experience is a new experience. It’s never the same. It may have hints of what might’ve been before, but it’s never the same. That’s the beauty of Chris Nolan. It’s always an original, it’s never a copy.

JW: What are you most proud of when it comes to Inception?

JK: I’m proud of its enduring legacy. That’s the thing Like I said to you in the beginning of our conversation, we never wanted to date it in any way. We wanted to make something that would around forever and in 20, 30, 40 years from now, you could watch Inception and it would feel like a new movie. It would feel like you just made it. I think we succeeded in that and I’m extremely proud of that.

JW: Any recollections from when it first opened in July 2010?

JK: The initial reaction to it was great because here you have an original piece written that, as an audience member, you are so challenged to get into. People went and saw the movie 2-3 times just to even understand it.

Someone would have a discussion with somebody and say, ‘What was this when this happened?’ And [the other person] went, ‘Oh man! I missed that!’ They would go back and see it again, so they could see it. Not just accept it from somebody else, they also wanted to experience and see it.

The idea of the top spinning at the end: was it reality? Were the kids real or was that in the dream? People would question those things, but then go back to see it again. It’s a very wonderful thing to be involved with an original production that didn’t blow things up and didn’t have people flying in the sky. That whole story was so complicated, that it just encompassed everybody’s imagination. I think it’s a film that deserves to be remembered, certainly every 10 years, if not more.