"Lost in Space" costume
designer Vin Burnham readily admits she is not an actor's best
friend. It's not that she doesn't make a star look thinner or sexier
or perfectly built. It's that her costumes are almost painfully
uncomfortable.
Take the cysosuites, the movie's costume centerpiece,
worn during takeoff for life support. They are so form-fitting
that the actors portraying the space-bound Robinson family (William
Hurt, Mimi Rogers, Heather Graham, Lacey Chabert and Jack Johnson)
and pilot Maj. Don West (Matt LeBlanc) had to be sealed into them
with medical glue. Burnham wanted to make a key fashion point -
you won't see any buttons, zippers or buckles in 2058. Each day
of filming, the cast would be unglued with medical solvent for
lunch and then be pasted in again.
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Burnham viewed the "Lost in
Space" costumes more as a fashion statement than as a test
of her science-fuction mettle. Indeed, she never saw the original
'60s TV series on which the film is based. "It was sort of
like going into a vacuum. There are no frames of reference for
an era you know nothing about," she says.
Instead, Burnham assumed that absolutely everything
in the future will bear a designer stamp, so the clothes had to
be "groovy" - chic and sexy. Sexy was easy - the actors
were well-proportioned to start with, but even they needed some
assistance. For instance, she emphasized the men's chests and shoulders
and the women's breasts, hips and waists, with paint - silver to
highlight and black to hide.
When the cast isn't sealed into cryosuits, they're
wearing military-designed outfits. Costumes made of heavy black
nylon mesh manufactured by England's Ministry of Defence. The cast's
casual vests and pants were made of a fire-retardant, acid-repellent
fabric that was manufactured by Spie-wack in New York, a company
that has made military clothes through several wars.
Anything to enhance a functional and believable "tough
look," Burnham says. "I put actors into clothes that
are not comfortable or are heavy or hot. Basically, actors don't
like to see me coming."
The suits, which are both anatomical-looking and
high-tech, are molded from latex foam, a now-standard, though technically
challenging, process done in specialized costume houses. In Los
Angeles, each actor was life cast in plaster, an ordeal in which
a person must stand absolutely still for two to three hours. Burnham
took the casts to London, where principal photography took place,
and turned them into positive fibreglass models at Jim Henson's
Creature Shop.
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She then
sculpted designs over the life casts using a very hard clay,
the same material used to
make car prototypes. Molds were taken off that, latex foam was
injected into each mold, and the molds were "baked like cakes
in an oven", she says.
It's the same procedure
Burnham used to make Michael Keaton's Batman suits in "Batman" and "Batman Returns",
for which she was "costume sculptor" to costume designer
Bob Ringwood. "The first one looks to me like something out
of "Dr. Who," very unsophisticated. But after the success
of "Batman I," there was a lot more time and money to
pour into the suit for the next movie, and it became much more
streamlined."
The London-based designer,
who is known for her sculptural and constructed costumes, started
out designing costumes
for the Royal Opera House in London's Covent Garden. "My very
first job in show business was literally when [Margot] Fonteyn
and [Rudolf] Nureyev were dancing. I would make little wings for "Swan
Lake" or mice for "The Nutcracker."
They may have been small
tasks, but they never failed to excite her. She continued working
in ballet and opera
productions throughout Europe, Canada and the United States. "I
did quite a lot of things like wings, tails, headdresses.
If anyone was dressed up as an animal, I'd always do that, whereas
my sister (Lal d'Abo, with whom she partnered for 10 years) would
do the beautiful little ballet dresses. I was never a straight
period costume designer.
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