Yahoo Lifestyle Meet the Costume Designer Bringing Kevin Costner’s Epic Western to Life
“A lot of people think a Western is easy,” says Kevin Costner. “You just get some Levi’s and hats and there you go. But it’s not—it’s monumental.”
Joining me via Zoom from his ranch in Colorado, Costner looks every bit the real life cowboy: his signature sandy blonde hair perfectly tousled, a manicured but rustic beard clipped short on his face. To call the four-part epic, Horizon: An American Saga a passion project for Costner is an understatement. It is, in many ways, a culmination of his life’s work, an embodiment of his icon status as a leading man of the American West. Bringing Costner’s vision to life required a team of artists all at the top of their craft, and when it came to costuming Horizon, that meant tapping the talents of Lisa Lovaas.
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Lovaas met Costner through a friend, she tells me, and she agreed to send over some materials for him to review, anxiously awaiting his feedback. “He was on set in the middle of nowhere, but I had no idea,” she shares. “I was counting down the days without hearing back and I started to panic that he hadn’t seen it. But then he messaged me asking to resend everything [after he got service.]” Lovaas’s research spoke for itself: Costner was immediately taken with the depth of history Lovaas included in her presentation, the breadth of understanding and heart she poured into her concepts.
“She was a very hard person to compete against,” Costner tells me.
Ziploc Bags of Dirt and Cement Mixers
With her team—which included her costume supervisor Leslie Sungail, her assistant costume designer Tiger Curran, her key costumer Chrissy Callan, her women’s made-to-order tailor Dale Wibber, and her men’s tailor Michael Sloan, as well as being under the direction of (and in collaboration with) Costner— Lovaas pulled off a production in costumes that is nothing short of revelatory. Each garment was meticulously sourced and crafted, and that was just the start. The aging and dyeing department undertook a massive effort to ensure everything that made its way on screen looked, felt, and functioned just as it would have at the time.
This was achieved through a myriad processes including (but hardly limited to) washing and caring for the garments in basins as they would have on wagon trails and running them through cement mixers to give them that authentic wear and tear. Lovaas also matched the dirt color and type on the clothes to the location where it was shot. “We had this beautiful chart we got from our [shooting] locations with little Ziploc bags filled with dirt from each location as a reference for the dirt color,” she tells me. “We wanted to represent those moments very specifically with tones and colors.”
The craft and construction that went into the men’s costuming was a massive undertaking. For these costumes, Lovaas sourced from mills in the American South but also in the U.K. Everything from the individual suspenders on each character to the grosgrain specially crafted for the film was exceptionally considered by Lovaas and her team, an attention to detail that makes all the difference on screen. “And then there were the hats!” And the headwear, she tells me, took up a considerable amount of space, both metaphorically in the narrative arc of the costume design and physically when it came to storing and organizing the costumes.
Authenticity was the through line in all of Lovaas’s work on the film: One of the hats worn by an actor was over 100 years old. Working side by side with Indigenous artisans was also critical, for both Lovaas and Costner, including collaborating with one trading post that even worked with Costner on Dances with Wolves. Native Americans handcrafted everything from the beaded jewlery worn by the Indigenous actors to the suede moccasins. Lovaas also utilized small details to signal attributes of certain characters, to weave costuming decisions into the storytelling. Costner’s paisley scarf, for example, stands out from the wares of the other men onscreen by design and may even be a subtle nod to what we learn about his character in Chapter 2, set to release this year. “I wanted that scarf because, while we don’t know who he is, I wanted that scarf to kind of let people think, well… there, something more about this character,” Lovaas says.
It Takes Two
I spoke with Lovaas and Costner separately, but it was truly a toss up as to who spoke more highly of who, each abounding with effusive compliments about the other—their craft, their camaraderie. In fact, it was endearing to watch the two of them tell virtually the same story about a moment on set, each with the other as the one who set the tone.
Lovaas recounted to me how almost every night on set, Costner took time to sit with her and look over materials and plans for the next day, no matter how late the night had grown or how tired he was. As Costner tells it, it was Lovaas who put in the extra hours, always making sure he was read in and then some. “She’s a little trickster,” he says with a chuckle. “She was under enormous pressure but that never stopped the stinker from finding openings to sit down with me.”
It was a nonnegotiable for Costner that the women in this film were more than window dressings, not the mere barmaids and background characters that they oft occupied in Westerns of yore. It’s a charge he said Lovaas understood acutely. “Women run right down the middle of all my storylines,” Costner tells me. “And she embraced that, she understood that. She’s gifted in that she handles men and women equally. She’s a lover of women and their silhouette.”
And in speaking to Costner and Lovaas, it was immediately apparent that the dynamic on set was one of sincere and reverent collaboration. “They’re in many ways, our alter ego,” Costner tells me about the relationship an actor has with their costume designer. “I could play out the second half of my career having [Lovaas] dress my actors.” For Lovaas’s part, she remarked often on all the ways Costner was a consummate gentleman on set, from going out of his way to make women on set feel safe and comfortable to taking time to work one on one with background actors and actors with smaller parts. “He’s the first one to hold out his hand to help you up into a car,” she says. “He is the first one to hold the door open. He involves you in the conversation if you’re sitting there.”
That commitment even extended to the non-human members of cast and crew. “Kevin doesn’t wear spurs,” she shares with me, noting there were no spurs on set. “The horse listens to Kevin’s moves and the body in the saddle. It just wasn’t necessary.”
Cowboy Rules
The everyman can learn a lot from Costner in this way, in his personal style, his depiction of the West, and how he lives his values, Lovaas says. It’s no secret the American West is an increasingly popular destination for the uber-wealthy. but Costner, she says, provides a masterclass in looking like a local.
“It’s quality, good tailoring. And a thing that’s I think really important is there is a, there’s a harmony between his tones,” she says of his personal style. “There’s no bright-colored boot. There’s no attention getting moment on what he’s wearing. There’s nothing that draws your eye down. You never want to look down. I think you always wanna look up. When you look at the man and have a strong hat, you look at the man first. You notice the cashmere, you notice the beautiful wool, you notice the good fitting, pant breaking just right at the subtle boot. But it’s not trimmed up with silver. It’s not trimmed up with gold. It’s not a big animal skin. It’s just something that is toned with the rest of the outfit. I think that’s the key. You only really look at Kevin.”
I asked Costner, too, of course, about his own personal style. Though he demurred on sharing his particular bootmaker (he did share he has Dunbar burnt onto the boot, after his ranch in Aspen) he had some advice for both dressing and living. “I dress for the environment,” he says, which starts with his boots. “I wear Levi’s [and some Ralph Lauren] and, and I layer and I wear turtlenecks and once in a while, look up and I’ll go, that looks pretty put [together!]”
There’s a sensibility and a restraint in Costner’s approach to dressing, a rebuke of trend and unnecessary consumption. In its place is a far more thoughtful way to dress and live in your clothes, with the promise that your clothes will love you back.
“This might sound weird, but if I see something I like, I’ll buy five of them,” he says, explaining that it simply makes the day to day more seamless: If something is in the wash or has well and truly worn out, it’s always advantageous to have another. (I assure him this is the furthest thing from weird and is, in fact, a rather common retort I’ve heard in my years of interviewing and researching the best-dressed men in the world.)
Everything he wears, he says, is fundamental to his lifestyle , whether he’s diving on historic ships in the Caribbean or going on turkey hunts with his sons. It’s a simplistic and highly utilitarian approach to dressing that, done right, sacrifices nothing when it comes to style as Costner is living proof of. “If you look back at the ’20s and ’30s, there was an elegance. Even people went to the ballpark in the ’20s in New York, they wore ties and vests and hats, and there’s a level of style that’s easy to achieve in a certain way.”
It’s also about legacy, and about values. He speaks warmly about all the wear his clothing has taken over the years, the rips and tears and dents and dings from life on his ranch. Badges of honor. “My clothes all have war marks on them,” he says. For Costner, it’s about more than just fabric and function though. “I suspect when I pass, my boys will wear some of my clothes to feel close.”
It all comes back to family for Costner, to his friends, his cast and crew, and the people he holds dear. With every question I pose him, he lobs back something that gives another person, like Lovaas, credit. For the duration of his career, Costner has become known as an icon of the modern American Western, a title he has earned not only through his roles but for his deep understanding of the region’s history and heritage. The American cowboy is an aspirational bastion of masculinity, and as Costner proves, of manners. In this way, he sets an example that should not be underestimated in its impact. I bring up Lovaas’s remarks about her time on set, about what a singularly kind and respectful environment he creates, and the example he sets as a gentleman. “You just want to walk into a room where everyone’s glad you’re there,” he tells me. “If there can’t be a lot of things, there should be manners. If there can’t be love, there should be manners. If there can’t be civility, there should be manners.”
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