Yahoo News ‘The Gilded Age’ Artisans Are Channeling Their Inner Berthas
[Editor’s note: The following interview contains spoilers.]
Bertha’s (Carrie Coon) schemes for a better New York high society, with her at the top, continue apace, and Aunt Aida (Cynthia Nixon) is married. It’s just the middle of Season 2 of “The Gilded Age,” but big doings keep happening to the denizens of Old Money and New Money New York — and, now, an HRH being entertained by the Russells.
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What’s been consistent throughout is the HBO series’ commitment to a high level of polish in its approach to everything from sets to lighting; that commitment offers the artisans who work on the series the chance to flex muscles they normally wouldn’t.
“The level of craftsmanship and the research and knowledge of the building of a historical garment that goes into [the show] is layers and layers and layers deep,” costume designer Kasia Walicka-Mamoine told IndieWire. “It’s a very privileged dance that I [get to do] with our makers.”
Walicka-Maimone estimates that hundreds of artisans work on the costumes for “The Gilded Age,” both in the U.S. and in Europe. “In the first season we were all learning each other’s creative languages, we were all learning each other’s skills, and this second season gave us just so much more fun and so much more pleasure in executing the designs,” Walicka-Maimone said.
One of the great surprise explorations for Walicka-Maimone in Season 2 has been Aida and adjusting the costumes for a woman experiencing a late-in-life romance. “We’re not changing the character. It’s still Aida. But it’s adding layers of romantic flair,” Walicka-Maimone said.
For Aida’s wedding gown, Walicka-Maimone and her team got to spotlight the kinds of flourishes and period craftsmanship that can get lost in the finery of fancier gowns, especially fabric and embroidered floral arrangements. Aida’s dress is a deep blue — which is true to the times; very few Gilded Age wedding dresses were white — with flowers brushing across the sleeves and collar, “just to give this softness and femininity and romanticism,” Walicka-Maimone said.
Against the more neutral background of the dress’s blue and the veil’s white, the flowers on each piece echo each other and call out the specific stitching, arranging, and sewing skills they took to create. “I think we all fell in love with the simplicity of that dress, rather than over-decorating it,” the “The Gilded Age” costume designer said.
The challenge of over-decorating is one that production designer Bob Shaw contends with constantly on “The Gilded Age.” Shaw’s research taught him that the houses of the era’s uber-wealthy were stuffed to the gills with finery, to the point where it would lose all visual sense and cohesion for a modern audience. On the subject of flowers, Shaw and the greens team needed to find modern translations for what the characters would have in their home. “They loved carnations and so [the period-accurate thing] would be to make a lot of things out of greens and swags of carnations. But they just don’t appear fancy to our eye anymore,” Shaw told IndieWire. “So we had to cheat and use some more exotic flowers in order to, I would say, try to create the effect on our audience that Bertha is trying to get from her guests.”
Creating that effect requires a lot of sophisticated applications of scenic painting and carpentry, everything from creating convincingly fake marble to 3D printing period-correct cornices for the early days of New York’s Metropolitan Opera.
“The reason that scenic artists love working on this show and the reason that they were willing to drive to Long Island and spend an hour a day in their car was [the fact that] they have so many skills; there was a very classical Italian style of painting scenery with highlight and lowlight, and they all had to be trained to do that to get into the union, but more often than not, they’re painting walls,” Shaw said. “They were excited to get to do all the marbleizing and all the faux finishes on this show.”
Shaw contends that if there were a marbling Olympics, “The Gilded Age” scenic artists would win gold. And while perhaps that’s something to save for a Season 3 (along with gilding, tortoiseshell, and Italian backdrops in Renaissance style), not all the rare artistry on the series harkens back to the Gilded Age itself. Shaw’s recreation of the Met was at a scale that buying decorative brackets from a home goods store wasn’t possible; they simply don’t come in the correct size. “There are certain things that were wood. There were certain things that were laid out on the computer, sent somewhere to have the profile computer cut [them], and then laminated to the side of these brackets,” Shaw said.
Time was Shaw’s only constraint in utilizing as many artistic skills as the Gilded Age’s grand houses (and opera houses) would have boasted. But the show itself provides a wonderful stage that motivates Shaw and his team. “I [keep saying] I’m channeling my inner Bertha,” Shaw said. “She’s trying to make a bigger mark, and she’s always climbing the next rung in the ladder.”
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