Costume designer Eric Daman had seen an early script for The Door In The Floor, shortly after completing his and Tod Williams’ debut feature, The Adventures of Sebastian Cole. Once their second film together finally got going, the duo studied numerous books on the Hamptons and Long Island locales, as well as photos of Williams’ own family on vacation in the Hamptons. “We wanted very specific shapes, fabrics and colors with a bit of a vintage feel to them, so we had them constructed, which was a bit of an ordeal, but they turned out beautifully,” reports Daman, who himself designed the swimsuits that were made for Kim Basinger to wear in the film.
Aside from the blue and white galabeya [North African-style caftan] that Ted Cole wears and the “typical teenager” garb for nanny Alice, “everything is pretty much muted solids,” says Daman. Marion was dressed to “melt away into the background,” even as Basinger’s face expresses much of Marion’s turmoil.
The actors had input into their characters’ wardrobe. Daman says, “It was a fascinating process. Jeff Bridges had a lot of ideas.” The actor also ended up raiding his own closet for a couple of items.
Also having ideas were designers who wanted to have Bridges and Basinger in their creations. English gunmakers and outfitters Holland & Holland supplied the oversized handmade straw hat Ted Cole sports in several scenes. The French fashion house Hermès is also represented. Knitwear designer Pierrot (Pierre Carrilero), who has been Daman’s partner for over ten years, and for whom Daman does creative direction, contributed most of the wardrobe for Bijou Phillips, the luscious pink cashmere hand-knit cardigan that over the course of the film becomes the signature Marion Cole clothing, and the black openwork silk crochet dress that Mimi Rogers wears as Evelyn Vaughn.
Eddie comes from more modest means, and is enrolled at Exeter Prep School because his father is on the faculty. Daman sought to costume Jon Foster to reflect “Eddie’s intellectual tortured poet side as well as his naïve side.” As the story progresses and Eddie becomes much more self-aware, “he grows up,” says Daman. “When he leaves at summer’s end, he looks great, a transition we reflect in the wardrobe.”
All of the characters go through transitions over the course of the film. As Ted Hope notes, “Sometimes the best choices we make are the hardest ones to make. Marion’s choice is one I wish on nobody, but it’s the right one for her and her family.”
Anne Carey adds, “Marion is doing what she thinks is best for her daughter. And I think that in bringing in Eddie, Ted feels that he’s making a necessary choice. But I don’t think any of them have a sense of what the ultimate result is going to be.”
Jeff Bridges states, “Fans of John Irving will not be disappointed. They’ll certainly go through a journey, but I don’t want to tell them where they’re going to end up.”
The actor sees the film’s title, taken from the children’s story that Ted has written, as “the story in a nutshell. We all, I suppose, have a ‘door in the floor.’ These terrible and tragic things we don’t want to go towards – are there, under the floor. We all want to keep the door shut, but in life you get called, and you’ve got to go down into it.”
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