Award Winning Costume Designer Marlene Stewart

Designing Hollywood Podcast Show

Award Winning Costume Designer Marlene Stewart Joins Designing Hollywood Show for an all-new episode dedicated to Top Gun Maverick! With your host Tess McLeod Top Gun: Maverick is not just the first time a Tom Cruise film brought in more than $100 million on opening weekend—it made nearly a quarter of a billion dollars, wildly surpassing expectations and records set by superhero blockbusters The Batman and most recently Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. These numbers are impressive on their own but in the context of empty theaters after two years of the pandemic, they are truly astonishing. Making such a hard-won success look effortless is de rigor for costume designer Marlene Stewart, whose credits include Oblivion and Tropic Thunder. She treats the accomplishment with characteristic sincerity. “I have worked with the late Tony Scott before and collaborated with Tom Cruise on several movies, so it also was an honor,” says Stewart. On this project, the magnitude of the original film’s success loomed large. “The challenge was to design another movie and to give it a great look without changing the heart and soul,” Stewart explains. In many ways, that heart and soul was embodied in a particular garment. Tom Cruise in his flight jacket is an image that has resonated ever since the film premiered. Reproducing the jacket was an exercise in precision, investigation, and determination. “It was one of our hardest, most important tasks. That attention to detail meant that other costumes had to get a similar amount of attention so that they would all fit in the same heightened reality. “In a testament to Joe Kosinski’s film-making and Tom Cruise as an actor and producer, many of the most exciting scenes are real U.S. Navy pilots flying actual planes, not CG. In this spirit of authenticity, many of the costumes, despite being uniforms, also were custom made.” The results are costumes that leap off the screen as much as the action. Sponsored by Costume Rentals Corporation! The variety of costumes at Costume Rentals Corporation is expansive. CRC is recognized worldwide as the premier supplier of military and police costume uniform rentals. CRC can accommodate any production from the ballroom to the battlefield. Armies can be outfitted for a formal affair or equipped with fatigues for battle scenes. We can deck out a band to march onto the playing field or dress bathing beauties in period 1920’s swimwear. Authentic to every detail, CRC has the patches, medals, buckles, buttons, accessories, and research to make all elements historically accurate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices