Andor and Death by Lightning costumer designer Michael Wilkinson creates worlds with fabric

It's hard to think of a film or television script that features fabric as a key part of the narrative.

It's not a story idea that would make the hard heart of a Hollywood producer leap in delight, but for a costume designer it's the elusive grail.

When the Star Wars offshoot TV series, Andor, came the way of award-winning Australian designer, Michael Wilkinson, the offer included creating an entirely new fabric, the culture and style of the people who manufacture it, and thousands of costumes for an entire galaxy of planets in an unexplored part of the revered saga.

"It was a sort of a spy thriller, political espionage project and the characters were written with lots of incredible details. So, I really wanted to make sure that the costumes also reflected the fact that these are real people. They're three-dimensional, they're layered in their writings. So, the costumes also would have the same sort of layering and detail and attention to nuance."

The softly spoken and thoughtful Wilkinson might not be a household name, but the Sydney-born, NIDA-trained colleague of Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin has gone on to have a celebrated and admired career in costume design, creating outfits for more than 40 films. His credits including the Twilight films, The Gentlemen, and American Hustle — for which he received an Academy Award nomination. 

He was also tasked with creating worlds for legendary director Zack Snyder's DC Extended Universe.

Andor required world-making on an epic scale. 

With his team, Wilkinson created thousands of exquisitely designed and detailed costumes for the distinct cultures of seven different planets. 

This included the invention of a material called Ghorman twill, a luxury fabric spun by Ghorlectipods, the native spiders on the elite planet Ghorman.

Starring Diego Luna, Genevieve O'Reilly and Stellan Skarsgård, Andor tells the Star Wars Rebellion origin story. Written by Michael Clayton director and writer, Tony Gilroy, there are no lightsabers, Jedis or the Force.

Instead, it is a steely political and social drama told through an appreciation of the history of revolutions — from central American uprisings to French and Russian history.

Disney spent $US650 million on creating Andor, making it the most expensive Star Wars series to date.

It's been widely regarded by professional and armchair critics as one of the best television series of the last few years.

Wilkinson's costumes play a big part in its success. For the refined culture of planet Chandrila, Gilroy's note to Wilkinson was a "Japan meets Scandinavia" aesthetic; with the structures and colours of the clothing in the wedding scene clearly demonstrating this.

On Mina-Rau, the workers are clothed in worn linen and cottons of earthy colours that evoke the pastoral paintings of Brueghel and Van Gogh.

Each wardrobe set required a meaningful and distinct look: "It could never be there just because it looked cool or Star Wars or science fiction," Wilkinson says.

In the end, Wilkinson's work became a masterclass in storytelling through costume, and those Ghorman twill garments, and around 700 other season two costumes earned them a Creative Arts Emmy Award in September this year.

"When I read [in the script] about the Ghorman twill, it reminded me of the French silk mills throughout history, and how they became such a source of pride and a benchmark for quality," Wilkinson says. 

"When we saw parallels between the French resistance in WW2 and the Ghorman front, the French style references seemed even more relevant."

Wilkinson, 55, has lived in New York or LA for most of his working life. He talks of a happy Sydney childhood with supportive parents and sisters and education at Sydney Grammar that he says opened his eyes to the world. His teenage years as a dresser at the Opera House was how he "got costumes under my skin".

Wilkinson went to NIDA straight from school, studying a design course in sets and costumes. After graduation, he fell in with other NIDA alumni, like Luhrmann and Martin. 

"I worked as a sort of assistant apprentice with the BazMark team, and I did research for them for several projects, some stuff on Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge … they really set the tone for me in my career for working very hard," he says.

"They learn all the rules, but then they know they're at liberty to break them because have such a great grounding in costume and design and theatre history."

He took on every job he could — "I was the young guy who would say 'yes' to everything and learn from it" — working on films like Babel and The Nanny Diaries until he was approached by Snyder.

"I hadn't worked at that scale before, but he must have seen something in me that made him believe that I could do it. I think 300 was the first film that we did together, and we had a really great connection in our love of filmmaking and aesthetics, film history and art history."

Wilkinson says he loves jumping from genre to genre: "That keeps things fresh for me."

So, for his Academy Award-nominated costumes in the 2013 film American Hustle, he worked closely with Amy Adams in fur and chiffon "with very little foundation garments" to help create the conceit of her con.

For The Gentlemen, he explored the rich and decorative history of English tailoring. 

His designs were so bold and on point, reflecting a modern London dandy, that New York bespoke tailor Michael Andrews observed: "You may think it's just Guy Ritchie's latest gangster/drugs/money, funny, and action-packed film — but really it's all about knitwear."

"What takes me through each project is a base approach to design, which is using clothes to tell the story, whether it's the silhouette, the textures, the colours — using the costumes to illuminate the themes of the project. That's my very first starting point," he says.

His most recent project has been the costumes of the American 1880s for Mike Makowsky's historical drama miniseries, Death by Lightning, about the assassination of Americas 20th president, James Garfield, starring Michael Shannon and Matthew Macfadyen.

"It was such a joy because it comes back to the reason why I got into costumes, which was the intense costuming I fell in love with as a 20-year-old, seeing the films of Zeffirelli, Visconti and Fellini and all the work of the great Italian costume designers," Wilkinson says. 

"For me to do a project set in 1881 was such a thrill because finally 30 years later I had the resources; I finally get to create these wonderful worlds."