Production Companies Warner Bros. Pictures, Village Roadshow Pictures, DC Comics (Vertigo), Lonely Film Productions GmbH & Co. KG., Donners' Company, Branded Entertainment/Batfilm Productions, Weed Road Pictures, 3 Art Entertainment, Di Bonaventura Pictures
Much as the landscape of hell is a hostile and deteriorated version of our own world, its inhabitants look as they did the moment they crossed over, but similarly degenerated.
Costume designer Louise Frogley (Spy Game, Traffic) offers “Francis’ concept that they die in whatever they were wearing and get grunged up in hell. As there is no water there, clothing gets dirty, dry and caked, as do the people themselves.” To achieve this look, she and costume supervisor Robert Q. Mathews had everything “stone-washed to get the newness out and then aged by our textiles staff by applying cheesecloth, yak hair, some polyester batting and liquid latex. They applied different types of dust and dirt and finally put it all through a severe drying process that, altogether, took 48 hours from start to finish for each article of clothing.”
Frogley avoids the concept of palettes in favor of suiting individual characters, zeroing in on the substance of each with a brainstorming approach. “Midnite is very colorful and flashy, Chaz is youthful and relaxed, Rachel needed an athletic and professional look, sexy but not overtly. Constantine is classic, cool, black and white, serious, linear, straight-edged.”
Acknowledging the strong film-noir elements in Constantine’s look and manner, she “was also somewhat influenced by English 1960s fashion and copied a raincoat for him from that period. The overall look is compact and slim, which enables him to move with his customary grace.” Considering the physical demands of the role, not to mention the amount of scenes that involve rain or water, Frogley kept a total of 25 duplicate coats on hand for Keanu Reeves, as well as 50 pairs of shoes.
For Gabriel’s entrance, Frogley prepared a richly tailored ensemble, which Swinton herself calls “the Sotheby’s rep look,” adding, “of course, I also have a beautiful set of wings. Every girl should have one.”
Frogley and her team, in collaboration with Stan Winston Studios, also created clothing for a loathsome entity the crew came to call Vermin Man – a demon in loosely human form who attacks Constantine on the street before exploding into his component parts which are largely snakes, roaches and scorpions. As Frogley recalls, “Mike Fink had the idea that the cloth consisted of termites. It took months with our textile artist, Marietta Lange, to develop samples for Mike and Francis.
Eventually we came up with something made of fleece, cheesecloth and wool, with sequins, beads, feathers, hair and toy insects.” Her candid evaluation of the final product? “It was completely revolting.”
Complementing Frogley’s efforts and also working in tandem with the visual effects team and the Stan Winston crew in particular, was renowned makeup artist and multiple Academy Award winner Ve Neill (Beetlejuice, Mrs. Doubtfire, Ed Wood). Leading a team of up to 15 makeup artists at any given time, Neill’s work ran the gamut from the subtle to the nightmarish, preparing human, half-breed and demon alike for various battles, as well as helping to reveal the effects of the advanced illness Constantine tries to hide behind a wall of action and attitude.
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