Designer Decked the Halls Like Prison Walls
Instead of a backdrop for a happy Christmas celebration, Guy Hendrix Dyas’ surreal sets helped foreshadow the film’s inevitable catastrophes
by: Karen Idelson
What could be more romantic and charming than creating a castle for a film about a princess? Instead of a fairy-tale setting, however, “Spencer” production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas was after something completely different. Something not so sweet.
“We needed [Diana] to feel as though she was a caged bird, or as though she was trapped,” says Dyas. “So, we coined this expression, ‘the elegant prison,’ while we were scouting and this led to a whole new train of thought for us. Rather than trying to replicate Sandringham, the way we wanted to present it was to create a household that on the surface seemed very opulent, very, very beautiful, very inviting, but underneath that thin layer of facade was a very melancholic and sad, depressing reality.”
Dyas made unusual choices to bring the “elegant prison” to life.
The production designer knew director Pablo Larraín viewed the story as a kind of “upside-down fairy tale or fable,” so he was free to move in a surreal direction at times.
“The bed that Diana sleeps in is extremely oversized, like a fairy-tale ‘Princess and the Pea’-style, enormous bed,” says Dyas. “The tapestry that the bed is made up of has medieval-style pheasants painted on them, which, of course, plays into the story later on.
“Diana’s bathroom has that very unusual 1930s caged shower, which is a real thing, but I proposed that to [Larraín] because again it was another one of those wonderful opportunities to exploit Diana as a caged bird. When she looks in, she looks like she’s showering in that caged shower.
“So, all the time we were working to create a level of reality, but also fine-tuning to serve the characters and what they might be feeling like to be in that space.” ✤
In “Spencer,” Diana is presented as a caged bird; production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas found ways to visualize that metaphor.
Reinterpreting an Icon’s Famed Style
Costume designer Jacqueline Durran and makeup artist Stacey
Panepinto avoided directly copying Diana’s look, choosing instead to evoke her ensembles and styles
When director Pablo Larraín set out to make “Spencer,” he knew Diana was one of the most photographed people ever. He also had ideas about the Princess and his own “Diana.”
The costume, hair and makeup teams on “Spencer” worked with Larraín to bring his vision to fruition.
“I never meant the wedding dress to be an exact copy at all,” says Jacqueline Durran, the film’s costume designer. “I wanted it to be an approximation.”
Durran took a similar approach to Diana’s other fashion statements for the intimate dinners that wouldn’t have been photographed or seen by the public. The stunning clothes were also restrictive, another element Diana hated.
“The clothes had the aura of Diana’s life from 1988 to 1992, but they weren’t exact; we were riffing on what she wore during that time,” says Durran.
Similarly, hair and makeup were more inspiration than precise copy.
“When it came to re-creating her iconic looks in the movie, including the wedding, Kristen and I wanted to find a balance between the real images from those moments and something that was our interpretation,” says Stacey Panepinto, Stewart’s longtime makeup artist. “We never wanted to copy things exactly but just nod to them.”
Panepinto and Wakana Yoshihara, hair and makeup designer for the film, avoided prosthetics and kept Stewart’s appearance natural. With the audience focused solely on Stewart’s acting, she was free to create her version of Diana that fit Larraín’s darkly evocative fairy tale.
Other pieces were used to more directly mirror Diana’s look, though.
“If the hairstyle is done in the right way, the audience will accept that this is the queen or this is Diana,” says Yoshihara. “So I focused on getting the hairstyle right for Diana, especially the one we used with the wedding dress.” ✤
by: Karen Idelson
