Sandy Powell

Richard: What’s the first thing you do between waking and beginning work?

Sandy: You pick a good moment to ask. I flew from LA to Savannah last night and slept right through; I just woke up! The first thing I do is drink hot water and lemon. Then I get ready really quickly. I’ll be out of the house or hotel in 45 minutes, wherever I am in the world. On a workday, that would be 5.30, 6am maybe.

R: Do you have a regular workspace?

S: I’m currently in Savannah for preproduction on a film called The Glorias – A Life on the Road, about Gloria Steinem and the rise of the women’s movement. At the very, very beginning of a project, I like to do a couple of weeks at home in south London; quiet, thinking. In my office there, there’s a desk and a chair and the room is lined with bookshelves. A filing cabinet with my drawings in. That’s about it. Then once it all gets going, they set up a workroom with offices wherever I happen to be working.

R: What happens in there?

S: The process is much the same whether a film is set in the 1970s or the 1700s. Having read the script and had a discussion with the director, I start the research. I have an extensive collection of books and photography; contemporary and period fashion, street photography, photojournalism. I plough through those, building up catalogues of images directly related to the period or just looking for pure inspiration.

R: What takes up the biggest share of your day?

S: In the middle of a project, administration – actually talking to people, solving problems. The smallest part is designing. That gets done in your sleep, when you go to the toilet; when you have a second to stop. I’d love to sit at my desk and create all day long, but I guess a lot of creativity takes place through talking to people.

R: Do you use the phone much?

S: No, no, no. I much prefer not to. If I’m on a big film, like Mary Poppins Returns, which was prepared and filmed entirely at Shepperton Studios, I literally go around visiting people in each department. Inevitably, they have questions – about, say, the placement of the buttons or how to make some Charles wellington boots have a turn-of-the-century look. How can we make jewellery that doesn’t make a noise on Meryl Streep?

R: How do you make jewellery that doesn’t make a noise on Meryl Streep?

S: Right, so she is wearing armfuls of Art Deco bangles in a big song and dance number during which there is dialogue; of course sound departments hate things like that. So we had them cast in rubber.

R: How many people do you manage?

S: On something as big as Mary Poppins Returns, there are probably 50 in-house and more outside. Then on a low-budget, independent film like The Glorias, 10 maybe, if we’re lucky, which means doubling up and working very long days. I try to work with the same handful of very close people on every job. My assistants manage squadrons of people on the bigger projects; my role is to have an overview. Usually, you look back and think, “I don’t know how we got that together.”

R: What was your first job?

S: Ever? I had a paper round when I was 12, in south London, in the days when children could still go out at six o’clock in the pitch black and deliver newspapers. But more relevant, at 16 I worked in the costume department of the National Theatre during school holidays. It was just after it had been built on the South Bank and it opened with a production called Tamburlaine. I was paid £20 per week to sweep the floor and make the tea in the men’s cutting room.

R: When did it occur to you that it might be a career?

S: Quite quickly. I’d think, “Oh, I could do that hem. I could do that button for you.” My mum used to make mine and my sister’s clothes, so she’d taught me how to follow a pattern, how to cut, how to use a sewing machine from a very early age. But it probably wasn’t until I saw Flowers by the Lindsay Kemp Company at the Roundhouse in 1976 or ’77 that I realised I wanted to be part of that world. I went to art school to study theatre design a few years later, when I was 20. Then meeting Lindsay Kemp and Derek Jarman – the first people to take me, this young, inexperienced, green person on – was the biggest influence on me.

R: How far ahead do you know what you’re working on next?

S: In this industry, you never know. There’s always talk of what’s next, but you can only take that seriously when it’s confirmed to start in the next few weeks. I don’t know what’s happening after March and, actually, that unpredictability is half the fun.

Interview by Richard O’Mahony. Portrait by Brigitte Lacombe, courtesy of Sandy Powell.