As a child, Helen Huang dreamed of being an archaeologist. Instead, she became a costume designer. And though the job doesn’t involve unearthing ancient artifacts, she says that working in film and television is at the crossroads of her personal and professional fascinations.
Regardless of genre, the two-time Emmy winner always focuses on the relationship between characters and their environments. “Costume is a hybrid between clothes, culture, people’s memories, and history,” she says. Her work on FX’s “American Horror Story” and Max’s “Station Eleven” allowed her to marry horror and sci-fi with real-world elements; and on Netflix’s “Beef,” she used clothing to highlight individual nuances.
Her latest TV project is Lauren LeFranc’s “The Penguin,” a spinoff of Matt Reeves’ 2022 film “The Batman.” The HBO limited series traces Oswald “Oz” Cobb’s (Colin Farrell) quest to rise to the top of Gotham City’s organized crime world. In the process, he takes on the young Victor Aguilar (Rhenzy Feliz) as his protégé and strikes up a tenuous working relationship with mob heiress Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti).
“I thought this was a great opportunity—and I told Matt and Lauren this—to explore Gotham not through the bird’s-eye view of Batman, but through different neighborhoods and economic circumstances in the city,” Huang says.
She built her vision for “The Penguin” on the foundations laid by “The Batman” costume designer Jacqueline Durran. This meant diving deep into Oz’s psychology—particularly when it came to what he considers to be a strong, masculine aesthetic.
Here, Huang discusses how Oz uses clothing to mask his insecurities, how Reeves’ movie influenced her work on “The Penguin,” and what it was like to collaborate with Farrell.
Helen Huang Credit: Jack Johnson
Were there any particular films or periods that influenced your designs for “The Penguin”?
As a costume designer, you’re trying to figure out the identity of the world, so it’s really important to think about what your director wants narratively and visually. Second, what is the project’s place in screen history and what has been done before? Even if a project is contemporary, I always try to look at historical references. You can’t just rely on contemporary clothes to tell a story, because it limits the depth.
I looked at a lot of 1970s garments. I always try to find an alter ego when I do a mood board for a character, and John Belushi was Oz’s: aggressive and wild, but charismatic to look at. I wanted Oz in a T-shirt; I wanted him in leather; I wanted him in jeans. I think it was so interesting to take him out of prim and proper suits. Matt always talked about “The French Connection” and “Klute” as tonal references, so you want him to be reminiscent of that type of film.
What did you and Colin discuss in your early conversations about the series?
Colin is a wonderful actor to work with; he’s very open. He didn’t want Oz to look costumey, but he did want him to feel specific. So you have to find the little, tiny line so you don’t cross to either side. Because of that, we focused a lot on color, texture, and silhouette. So, how big is his collar in relation to his body? We thought he would have custom-made suits, so we worked through all the silhouettes down to his little pointy shoes. It’s very subtle.
When we first meet Oz on the show, he’s wearing a brown leather trench coat. What were you trying to say about him with that look?
In the movie, Oz was always at his nightclub, so he was peacocking and had a very stylized idea of himself. We were trying to think of a way to change the silhouette of this beautiful 1980s double-breasted leather trench coat he wears in “The Batman,” but also to mimic it, in a way. So instead of doing broad, sloping shoulders, we did big, angular shoulders.
Oz is insecure about how his clubfoot makes him look, so he is very meticulous about how he presents himself, even with the clothes he wears casually. We thought big, sharp shoulders, and heavy, heavy leather. That trench coat was cowhide.
We also talked a lot about his masculinity and how he feels about it, and how it contrasts with Sofia’s femininity and Victor’s youthful idea of masculinity. Oz is very old-school, so the textures and silhouettes he wears fit his idea of what a tailored, masculine man looks like. We did the shirt without the tie because we wanted to feel like he was at Alberto Falcone’s [Michael Zegen] office to do business, not to peacock in front of people; he was there to get down and dirty. I think that combination has a good effect; it’s kind of dressy, but it’s also dressed down because of the textures we used.
How did you factor practicality into costumes in scenes with a lot of action and stunt work? Were you looking at more breathable, flexible fabrics?
First of all, that prosthetic bodysuit Colin wore was very warm, and he couldn’t feel the clothes on top of it. There was nothing we could do about that. We were considering fabrics his character would wear: really fine, imported wool and the finest dress shirt material we could put him in. What are the subtle colors he would use? There was a lot of consideration about how Oz would decide what to put on himself.
But when he had to be physical, we tried to adjust the best we could. We would try to hide gussets [to reinforce the seams]. And we used a pair of suspenders, because the thing about wearing the bodysuit is that you can’t put on a belt. It won’t stay up because it’s not actually on a human body. Nothing was tailored too tight, because Oz was not trying to go for a 2010 suit or jacket look; he was definitely doing 1970.
Colin is also an executive producer on the series. Did he approach your discussions from that standpoint, or more in his capacity as an actor?
Colin is very trusting of the heads of the creative departments around him, because he likes to be immersed in the world. He likes to be collaborative and ask your opinion and take your suggestions. He comes in knowing what his character wants; then you, as the costume designer, have to design within what he’s thinking. Then you offer him suggestions. I call them “wild cards.” You wild-card him a little bit after you get to know his character, and interesting things happen from there.
Did any of those wild cards make it onto the show?
The white suit, and the outfit he wears in the tunnels under Gotham, which was based on 1940s military wear. We found a 1940s Navy coat that we took for inspiration because of how heavy it is and the shearling that was involved. It’s too dark to see it, but he wore a lot of 1940s work shirts and trousers paired with suspenders. We felt like even at his most destitute, Oz would be like: This is my workwear for the people.
The tuxedo he wears at the end was a surprise. Colin had said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if Oz came from, like, a fancy-schmancy dinner where he was hobnobbing with the top echelon of Gotham?’ We had talked about how Oz loves “Top Hat” and Fred Astaire. We looked at styles from the 1930s, when the waistcoat was a little bit higher and the pants sat very high in proportion to the tails. We decided on an opera coat situation when he was walking in. That was a great surprise because it’s a lot less grounded than what we’d done before. It’s very Baroque, in a way.
What was the inspiration for that white suit you mentioned, which Oz wears at his nightclub on the third episode? It feels like he’s trying to put a stamp on his collaboration with Sofia, but also to make his own mark.
I love “Casino,” and this outfit was a reference to a very light silver suit Joe Pesci wears with a very dark shirt in the movie. But it was hard to get the silver right with the lighting of the club, so I pitched a white suit with a red shirt.
There are a couple of reasons for that: We tried to make the Triads [a rival criminal organization] look young and hip in the club—so we thought it was funny that Oz was into this old-school masculine idea of hip. And Oz thinks this is his moment; this is his deal. He was manipulating and using Sofia, and it’s like he’s dressing up to overshadow her.
We talked a lot about Sofia’s family, the Falcones. Even though they’re a crime family, they’re old, institutionalized money. So Sofia always looks effortlessly rich, because that’s where she came from. Oz is a social climber and wants to dress to impress, while Sofia just dresses well. We tried to play on that as much as possible.
Was everything Colin wore custom-built?
Everything had to be made, because it’s not a real body. It looks real onscreen, but when you look at the dimensions, it’s not real, so you have to craft [with that in mind]. I think the only thing we might not have made is his tuxedo shoes. He did also wear some shoes that were from the movie, because we wanted that connection. Oz would wear tailored suits, because he’s compensating for something, so we tried to compensate and design according to his psychology of what he’s trying to cover up.
What were your biggest takeaways from working on “The Penguin”?
I think I learned a lot about designing for IP. A lot of people are already interested in [the property], so you have to be faithful to it. Because we were being faithful to the version of Oz in “The Batman,” we also had to think about how to deviate from it. What do you owe the fans? How can you create a new dialogue to show them? If you’re going to do a comic-book adaptation, regardless of whether it’s flashy or grounded, you need to have something new to say. That’s something that I took from “The Penguin”: how to be faithful while also introducing something new.
What’s one thing you can’t do your job without?
I would say my computer, because I spend a lot of time researching in libraries and online, and I use Keynote to create mood boards. Communication is key in our industry, but you can’t only do verbal communication; that’s where you waste time and run into a lot of miscommunications and mistakes. But if you show people images, then they understand better. It’s about tone. People don’t always want to look at clothes—they want to look at the tone of the whole piece.
This story originally appeared in the June 12 issue of Backstage Magazine.
