Sarah Arthur (‘The Sandman’ costume designer) on ‘huge task’ of blending genres and creating Dream’s helm [Exclusive Video Interview]
“The Sandman” is a “fascinating project” to work on, reveals costume designer Sarah Arthur in Gold Derby’s Meet the Experts panel. The Netflix series is based on the DC Comics written by Neil Gaiman, and stars Tom Sturridge as the titular supernatural character who goes by the names Lord Morpheus and Dream. “We covered everything” in terms of genres, Arthur tells us, from Victorian to contemporary to fantasy to horror, etc. “It was all intermingled in each episode, so it was a huge task but fantastic from a costume designer’s point of view.” Watch our exclusive video interview above.
Dream’s trademark accessory is his helm, a skull mask with a four-foot-long spine that serves as a major plot point when it goes missing in the pilot. “It’s supposed to be skin and bone, so that’s what we looked for to replicate,” Arthur reveals. “Everything was just sort of very natural and organic, and that’s how I came up with different textures and artwork and color sketches.”
Shifting focus to the sixth episode, “The Sound of Her Wings,” Arthur goes into detail about what it was like recreating looks for Dream and Hob Gadling (Ferdinand Kingsley) across eight different centuries. “It was an extremely hard episode,” she confesses. “We shot it over two weeks. It was in the very peak of the pandemic, so there were very little costumes [available]. We were able to go to costume houses, but really cautiously. No shops were open in London.”
She was “lucky” because they were able to do a lot of the episode in-house. “I’ve got a huge fabric collection, a huge store of period and contemporary costumes,” Arther declares. “We made [looks for] all of the main cast, all of the smaller parts and some of the background. It was the most brilliant challenge. We all had a great time. Obviously the pain is gone now, and when I look at it, I’m quite proud of what we achieved.”
Sturridge spends most of the first episode completely naked, as Dream is held captive without clothing for over 100 years. Does that mean Arthur got to take the day off that week? The department head chuckles, “Tom was naked for that whole episode, but obviously we were back in Victorian era London and we had lots of other people to clothe. Those initial episodes were so incredibly important for the rest of the look for Dream … There were loads of costumes to design for him whilst he wasn’t wearing anything.”
Speaking of Dream’s wardrobe, Arthur notes how “the cloak was really important.” Her team sampled “lots and lots of different looks” and “followed the comic extremely closely” wherever they could. “Going forward, we needed structure, we needed fine lines,” she states. “I tried to create a look that gave him stature and strength going through these episodes.”
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