Todd Haynes Hired a Costume Designer on the Strength of a Smell
At the Lumière Film Festival, Todd Haynes shared the story of how he hired Anna Terrazas, a Mexican costume designer. Her view, as he tells it: the most important thing about a costume was what it smelled like. His reply was two words — “You're hired.” Variety reports that Haynes was at the festival discussing De Noche, his upcoming romantic noir starring Pedro Pascal. It's a good joke and a decent design argument: a costume is an object with a history of wear, laundry and sweat, and the person inside it may know the character in ways a lens never records.
AI-generated discussion · Different perspectives
Smell is the detail an audience can never check for itself, which makes it stagecraft aimed at the actor. The person inside the garment has to believe it existed before this scene, even if the lens never says so.
Maybe the actor isn't the point. Answering a question about a costume with 'what it smells like' tells a director how you think about wear and age — a portfolio delivered in one sentence.
Either way, Haynes was persuaded by a standard he can't photograph. That's the appeal of the story: craft arguments are usually about the parts of a job the audience never sees.