{"id":314831,"date":"2025-11-28T18:36:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-28T18:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/314831\/"},"modified":"2025-11-28T18:36:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T18:36:08","slug":"how-dried-scabs-informed-the-red-tones-in-hamnet-costumes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/314831\/","title":{"rendered":"How Dried Scabs Informed the Red Tones in ‘Hamnet’ Costumes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\u201cThe first image in my head was a giant beating heart muscle, throbbing and pulsing with blood,\u201d says \u201cHamnet<\/a>\u201d costume designer Malgosia Turzanska<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tRed becomes the main color palette for Jessie Buckley\u2019s Agnes.<\/p>\n

\n\tBased on Maggie O\u2019Farrell\u2019s 2020 novel, \u201cHamnet,\u201d now playing in theaters, tells the story of William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) and his wife, Agnes (Jessie Buckley) as they grieve the loss of their 11-year-old son, Hamnet. The film follows the couple as they attempt to reconcile the loss of their child, and how William Shakespeare began to write his play \u201cHamlet.\u201d Directed by Chloe Zhao, it is a story of love and loss.<\/p>\n

\n\tTurzanska says when she first met Zhao, there was no script. The two were working off the book. \u201cWe talked about blood, menstrual blood, pumping blood, drying blood and so the different colors of blood are definitely in her.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe first time audiences meet Agnes, she\u2019s young in red bark cloth in the woods. When she settles down with William Shakespeare and has children, the red becomes more muted. \u201cShe\u2019s less herself and more about her kids,\u201d she explains.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe turning point comes when Hamnet dies from the plague. Agnes\u2019 clothes get darker, and when her husband returns, the couple grieves their loss. But he soon has to return to London and leaves her. When he tells her he\u2019s going back to London, Turzanska wanted to show how far apart the two are sartorially. She\u2019s in a brown smock, with a gray bodice. In contrast, he\u2019s in layers and leathers.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen Agnes gets up from the table, it looks like the character isn\u2019t wearing a skirt. \u201cThe idea was that the character had started to get dressed. She still has something to live for. She has these other kids, and she started putting herself together, and forgot to put the skirt on.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTurzanska, who used the varying colors of blood to reflect Agnes\u2019 journey, says, \u201cIt\u2019s a heartbreaking moment,\u201d because at that point, she\u2019s grieving the loss of her son, and the silhouette is no longer voluminous.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt one point, she\u2019s in a prune-colored skirt, which Turzanska describes as a dried scab.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the end of the film, when she travels to London and sees her husband\u2019s play at the Globe Theater, the character has regained some life. \u201cShe actually puts on the same dress as we saw in the scene where she\u2019s very pregnant. It\u2019s the same dress, but closed up.\u201d Turzanska adds, \u201cShe\u2019s going back to herself and trying to reconnect. So she does end on a red, but it\u2019s no longer that youthful.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tCostume sketch for Agnes by costume designer Malgosia Turzanska <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMalgosia Turzanska<\/p>\n

\n\tFor Shakespeare, Turzanska broke away from the traditional images the world has of the Bard. \u201cThe images that we have in our heads were painted years after his death. So knowing that freed me from trying to stay true to any of that,\u201d she says. He has Tudor details in his clothing. The pinking and slashing of textiles were used as an emotional tool to express his state of mind.<\/p>\n

\n\tHowever, his layers were simple. The first doublet he wears when he meets Agnes is quilted. In that outfit, the slashes are small, but after Hamnet\u2019s death, they have gotten bigger.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor his ghost costume, Turzanska looked at how other artists had interpreted \u201cHamlet\u201d over the centuries, and she stumbled on a sculpture made of cracked clay. As she showed Zhao other costumes, the director was drawn to the photo. \u201cThat\u2019s how we got to the clay. But, I also was searching for the origin of a ghost as a sheet, and where it comes from. And, of course, it is because bodies were wrapped in sheets when they were being buried. And so that\u2019s, you know, it\u2019s not a bed sheet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the end, Shakespeare is covered in dried clay that cracks and disintegrates. Turzanska says, \u201cIt is revealing him to be raw and open.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tCostume sketch for William Shakespeare by costume designer Malgosia Turzanska<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMalgosia Turzanska<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThe first image in my head was a giant beating heart muscle, throbbing and pulsing with blood,\u201d says…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":314832,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,134,77400,177981,177982,344],"class_list":{"0":"post-314831","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-hamnet","12":"tag-jesse-buckley","13":"tag-malgosia-turzanska","14":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/314832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}