If you’re interested in fashion at all, then you know who Randolph Duke is. If you’re not, and you watched the Oscars last year, then you still know who Randolph Duke is, although you might not recognize his almost movie-star handsome face. Remember Hilary Swank‘s beautiful, draping dress? He designed it. His gowns have been spotted on such shining stars as Minnie Driver, Kim Basinger, Heather Graham, Geena Davis and Lisa Kudrow. Now, he talks exclusively with Hollywood.com’s Sandy Kenyon about dressing the stars for this year’s Academy Awards.
Sandy Kenyon: Tell us what’s going on [at the Oscars], for those who will never get here, who are seeing it through your eyes.
Randolph Duke: It all leads up with this sort of mayhem and madness–this supermarket almost. It’s become marketing blitzkrieg, with everybody coming to town hawking their wares, from dresses to hosiery to earrings to jewelry to make-up, and artistry. And everybody is sort of waiting for that moment when that superstar steps on the red carpet to strut her wares and her body and her gorgeousness for the Academy Awards.
It seems that the fashions and the look and the image of it all have almost superceded who wins. What is she wearing? Who is she wearing? What is she going to look like? The art of fashion and the art of image have become kind of a sport, a national pastime. I mean, men are interested now. Kids are interested in it now. I think we have a new era of image and what people look like that I think is kind of great in a sense. People take pride in getting gussied up and looking good, which is also about feeling good. It’s sort of exposing the inner self and saying, “Hey, I want to feel good; I want to look good. Because I feel good.” And they sort of mirror each other. If you look good, you feel better. You have a better time.
Kenyon: Does the competition between designers get more fierce with each passing year?
Duke: I try not to focus on competition because I think that what happens is you throw the baby out with the bath water. If you start worrying about who your competition is and try to maneuver the game too much, like a chess game, you get caught up in the chess game of it all and not doing your job. My job is to make women look beautiful. If I focus on the actress and I’m very intimate in the experience and I look at her and I do her justice by working with her eyes, her shoulders, her best features. Playing up what really works with an Ellen Burstyn. Playing up what really works with a Marcia Gay Harden. Playing up what really works with a Halle Berry. Not a whole lot to do because that’s truly a beautiful woman. But, every woman has insecurities. Every woman has figure flaws. Every woman is insecure about some portion of her body, some little thing that she’s not completely sure about. This is about instilling confidence. This is also about bringing up confidence. What colors would I feel good in? How will I be comfortable all night? How can I hide this little thing, that extra five pounds I didn’t lose because I ate a box of Krispy Kreme donuts because I was so nervous.
[As to the competition for dressing the stars], it’s all very uncontrollable, you know. As much as you think you can gift people and send them notes and send them flowers and control it, everybody is out there cross-pollinating. You know, the few days before the Oscars everybody’s dresses kind of arrive in the suites, or hotel rooms, or homes of these actresses. And it’s Christmas day for them. They get to pick a dress for the Oscars.
And your dress is up against four from Valentino, and four from Ralph Lauren, and four from Vera Wang, and four from Chanel, and four from Jean-Paul Gaultier. And then it becomes sort of like all the work that you may have gone through, all the problems and the Fed-Ex and the beads falling off and the shipments lost and all the midnight hours. Midnight hours? How about two a.m. hours? It doesn’t matter anymore to her, because she shouldn’t know about any of all of that. And it becomes time for her to pick a dress. And the sweet justice in all of this to me is that, in the end, all of that craziness that goes on, the wooing and the courting and the gifting and the, in a sense, marketing, over-marketing, it comes down to one thing. She tries a dress on and she either goes “Wow,” or she goes “Eh, I don’t think so.” So, the best dress wins. At least the best dress for that moment that makes her feel like a princess. If it’s a princess she wants to look like. Or a goddess, if it’s a goddess she want to look like.
[PAGEBREAK]
And on Thursday morning if she’s trying her dresses on she may be feeling like she wants to be in black. If it’s Thursday afternoon she’s trying her dresses on she may be feeling like she wants to look like a flamenco dancer, because she’s just come from flamenco class. Or if she comes from ballet class she may be in a ballerina mood. It really does show you that life is very impulsive and uncontrollable. The mood you’re in is like eating food every night. You don’t know if you’re going to have Mexican or Chinese food. You don’t know if you’re going to be in a green dress, a red dress, a black dress or a gold dress.
Kenyon: Here is what I have learned from you. As famous as you are, as well known as you are around the world, there’s an uncertainty for a designer on Oscar night. And that uncertainty has to do with, you’re there, it’s over, it’s the show, and now they’re coming out of the limo, the limousine. Tell us about the uncertainty.
Duke: Exactly. The uncertainty can be really daunting if you place too much emphasis on results in life and too much emphasis on the finality in life rather than focusing on the process. As an artist I think you really have to be involved in the process…if you put too much emphasis on the finality, of course it’s a let down. If that foot steps out and you see blue instead of red and you knew your dress was red for that actress, you’re gonna be sad. You’re gonna be upset. You’re gonna be “oh, she didn’t wear it.” But, the truth is you can’t control it. You can’t control it. Every actress has options, and wisely so. Think about it this way. What if she was putting her dress on at home and the zipper broke? It could happen. What if she was getting into her limo at home and the chiffon train got a big snag in it because the driver closed the door in it? She’d have to quickly run back upstairs and put on the alternate dress. When they make movies and Sharon Stone is filming Basic Instinct, they have three or four copies of the same outfit so that doesn’t happen. Alternates are important. So, dresses always have back ups.
Kenyon: We had a lovely talk with Ellen Burstyn, for about an hour, and she told us how this has changed since the ’70s when she was nominated so many times. Are you dressing her this year?
Duke: Well, it’s hard for me to discuss details because in this town there’s that funny thing about confidentiality. Although, I find that this year it seems to be a little less hung up on that. I don’t know why it always is like that. But I think there is that element of surprise that people like…particularly the details of color or style. It is nice for it to be kind of “Wow, who knew it was going to be that?” Because you’re more surprised when you go to a movie and you don’t know as much about it, than knowing what it’s going to be. It’s always more exciting and you like it better.
Ellen — it’s almost hard to find words for what it’s like to work with somebody so grounded, so much there, there. This is a town that’s known for making stars. Some of the more immediate situations have been that they make stars and they’re not around a couple of years later because it’s a machine that just needs new stars all the time because there is so much media air time to fill.
And then you finally work with somebody who has so much talent and so much ability and so much confidence in their inner self that is projected outwardly, that there is a soulfulness when you work with them, that you just get them right away. And they have so much individual personal style that they really know best what works for them. And it’s the way I like to work best because I can get a sense of what she knows works for her. But, I can also help, I think–I’d like to hope so–bring it up a bit, instill some confidence and maybe have her step out, a little bit out, and try something she may not have tried before. And push a little bit, where appropriate.
So, it’s a wonderful collaboration. I’ve enjoyed it very much. We started with the Golden Globes. And I just love her to death. I think she is just one class act and so earthy and so real and so intense and sweet and fabulous.
Kenyon: She’s come up here for fittings?
Duke: Actually, no. We’ve gone to her. I think it’s really nice to be with somebody in their environment. You learn a lot about them. And she has been kind enough to invite us into her environments, which has I think given me a real peek at who she is. But, that doesn’t often happen.
[PAGEBREAK]
But, when it does it’s even better because an actress is all about listening. That’s what makes a great actress, a great actor I should say. It’s being a great listener. And likewise I think a great designer needs to be a great listener. He needs to listen to what the woman wants: I look good in these colors; I feel better when I wear this; I think my eyes are great; can we do something that accentuates my eyes; I really like my eyes. Again, it’s about playing up their confidences and making them feel great. If you can make a woman feel great you’ve really done yourself and the woman a great justice as a designer.
Kenyon: Let’s talk about Hilary Swank. What does it mean to you when a woman that you have dressed is up there accepting the Oscar for Best Actress?
Duke: Well, it’s twofold for me. It’s really kind of moving. At the same time it was surprising…because I didn’t expect it. And those are kind of the sweetest moments in life–when you don’t expect it, and you’re moved at the same time. I didn’t really expect it because I hadn’t thought much about it. I guess I really didn’t think an actress this ingenue, this darling, this starlet, was going to become a star and win an Oscar so quickly. For me, that was the greatness of the moment. She was the star that night. Secondly, that she was then dressed so appropriately and really was the belle of the ball in her sort of…gamine number. I thought she really looked the part. I was proud, and I think she really was very happy with the way it all turned out.
Kenyon: Tell us the thinking behind that particular dress and the planning for Hilary Swank. In that case, at least in my opinion, the dress, the actress and the performance all came together Oscar night. Tell us about the dress.
Duke: Well, the dress was a departure from the look of what she had done and the image she had portrayed in the film. So often designers and the public sort of think that persona or the character somebody has played is very attached to who the person is. I am very much into the idea that we need to create icons that come from a woman’s individuality…. So often somebody plays a part, and for the rest of their lives they are thought of as that person. In Hilary’s case she had played a boy, and it was very important, I think, for her to come across as really what she is. She’s got a fabulous, curvaceous body, and she had that wonderful haircut and that almost pixie, gamine, slightly Audrey Hepburn look going on at the time. And I thought it important to put her in something kind of less va-va-voom, even though she can carry that quite well. She is somewhat of a chameleon; she can do a lot of looks. But, at that moment, it seemed appropriate to go less sexy and slightly more gamine and that’s what I think worked so well about it. It had a slight Charles James homage–a great American designer, rather undiscovered, unknown, who was a predecessor and worked collaboratively with Halston, and worked in the style of V&A with rather seamless soft draping and sinewy cuts, which are my signature.
I do soft clothes. I don’t tend to do very structured clothes. I love things that are very goddess inspired and coming down from Mt. Olympus, I guess you could say. Things that seem seamlessly draped across the body, as [Swank’s] dress was, in a slightly more ball gownish mode. Which again, is not my signature. I don’t tend to do ball gowns. When I do, I try to do them in a departurist style, which is slightly softer.
Kenyon: Your clothes are not for the faint of heart, you say.
Duke: The best thing you can say about my clothes-they are not for the faint of heart. And if I’ve ever done a collection that says that it’s this one this year. It’s time to step up. It’s time for ladies to be confident. It’s time for us to stop being homogenous and start celebrating our individuality–culturally and spiritually. We must blur these boundaries between Asian and the year of Crouching Tiger and the year of Jennifer Lopez and her Puerto Rican hutspa. It is time for girls to feel that they can celebrate their curly South American hair and gorgeous deep African-American beauty. It is time to really start being who you are. And so much of what this collection was inspired by the icons who stood for their independent styles. Starting with Marlene Dietrich, Dolores Del Rio, Malicent Rogers, Babe Paley, Gloria Guinness, all of those, Doris Duke, Barbara Hutton. The list goes on. I want to know who we’re going to be remembering from this era, who stood for that kind of individuality. That spirit of jumping into a pool with a couture gown.
[PAGEBREAK]
We dress up today, but we only dress up for pictures. We’re posing. Stop posing. Wear a dress and be it. Don’t try to be Jackie O. Be Hilary Swank. Be Gwyneth Paltrow. Be Cate Blanchett. And there’s one who is. Cate Blanchett. She isn’t being somebody else. She isn’t posing Grace Kelly. She isn’t posing Audrey Hepburn. So, in a way it is a bit of the fault of some designers and some media that we tend to reverentially go one with this deifying of the Audrey Hepburns and the Grace Kellys. I think we miss and hope for the glamour of another time that may be by gone. Maybe we are so jeans-and-T-shirted out that we just want to get out of those stiff clothes and gowns because, God, give me a pair of sweats and popcorn and I’ll sit in front of the TV and watch the Oscars and I’ll be more comfortable. But, there is another part of us that longs for a kind of, not fantasy, but, a kind of light, a less mundane, a less sloppy, a more tingly, spine tingly…. That thing when you hear a Cole Porter song. That thing when you hear a piece of jazz and a woman walks in [wearing] a pair of black stockings. It maybe old fashioned and it sounds old fashioned, but it doesn’t have to be old fashioned. There can be a new version of that. And that is yet to be really said.
I do have to give Madonna credit for having created a chameleon fashion icon. This is a woman who changes her hair from black to blonde to red in a day. There is something to be said for that. But, since that icon creation there has not yet been a new one who has stepped up to the plate and not been basically copying or posing from images. Not even that Madonna didn’t use Marlene Dietrich or Marilyn Monroe as imagery. I guess that’s what I’m looking for. How do we get to that? How do we create our own? So, it’s about being open minded, listening and mostly having fun. I don’t see people having the fun that I look at when I see the old Hollywood pictures. Marlene Dietrich is powdered; painted, lacquered, and bleached as she was in a dripping silver bugle-beaded number with ermine dripping at her sides. I can still see her chopping potato salad like a house frau and having a ball. Or I can see the shoes off at the end of the night at Cyrano’s, dancing on a tabletop. I don’t see a lot of that happening as much anymore. And I think it could possibly be because of the fear of the media and the picture the next day in the Enquirer.
Kenyon: That’s really it isn’t it? What works finally at Oscar time and what doesn’t?
Duke: That’s a hard question. What works and what doesn’t work. Almost everything works, because we’re in a time where bad almost gets more attention than good. And I think we run the risk that … look at the Grammys, where you have to start painting tattoos on your nipples to get attention because good taste can kind of go unnoticed. And unless you do something so outrageous because the media sees so much, they need something so outrageous to get attention, that if someone walked into the Oscars wearing a diamond g-string it might get a lot of attention. And I don’t doubt that we’re nearing the day where somebody might just do that. It’s fine when you’re Cher to do that because that’s who Cher is. But, I find it borderline, not borderline, somewhat vulgar, if you do it purely for the media attention, and it doesn’t really suit who you are. On the other hand, that’s not such a smart statement because it could be very smart to do that and get a lot of media attention and sell 50 million records the day after you do it.
Kenyon: Maybe that works at the Grammys. My personal opinion, tell me if I’m wrong, is that at Oscars, less is more.
Duke: It’s kind of my perception as well, that you can say less is more and really draw attention up. My focus this year has been to really draw the attention up. It’s the year of the actor. It’s not the year so much of the star or the model star as I call her, the six foot beauties with the long legs and the gorgeous Charlize Therons who are not attending. And Cate Blanchett who’s not attending. And Cameron Diaz who’s not attending. A lot of those who can take clothes real well and can put on a burlap sack and look good, often intimidate most everyday women across America because they don’t look like that. We have a year where there are women in all shapes and sizes who really represent a broad cross-section of some of the greatest actresses and actors we have in the country today. And I think are very relatable and accessible to women and men across America.
[PAGEBREAK]
My goal is to bring the focus to the face and to who they are and what they’re about. And dress them in a way that says, “Hey there’s more than just T&A; there’s more than just a great bod.” We all would like to look like Brad Pitt. We all would like to look like Charlize Theron. But, what if you don’t? Are you nothing? The intimidation factor of high fashion has got to change, which may sound strange coming from a high fashion designer. But, the plans for Randolph Duke going forward are vastly different. We’ll talk about that another time. My global strategy and plan for extending my brand is about reaching women. It’s really about helping them with the everyday choices. How do I get dressed on Monday? Yeah, I’ve watched the Oscars now, but I can’t wear that. What do I wear to work on Monday? How can Randolph Duke help you with how to pick out a great skirt, a great jacket and the stuff to put under it to make you look ten pounds slimmer? How can I help them with more than that? Make-up choices, shoe choices, bag choices, scarf choices. It’s not just about pretty dresses and bangles and beads that cost five thousand dollars. My global strategy is to help the everyday woman, empower her. The same way I empower a movie star when she walks down that red carpet. And there’s no difference. When I make her look great, she has the same insecurity problems about her bust, her hips, her waist, her shoulders. I teach her how to walk, and I teach her how to stand, and I give her confidence, and we work on it.
It’s like a Tupperware party. We get together with the girls and we try shoes on and they are just as sweet, just as insecure. They’re just girls, too. They’re just people, too. They just happen to have a lot more cameras on them and a lot more pressure on them. But, you’d be surprised. They’re just sweet women and sweet ladies who chop potatoes in the kitchen, too, and pour their own Diet Cokes and go to the grocery store, too.
You know, Julia Roberts is a simple gal. She’s not any fancy schmancy. She drives a Jeep on a ranch. She opens her own car doors. It appears, I think, to the world that these people have lives of silver spoons and limousines. And yes, there are perks. But, we live in a world where imagery creates all of that. And I think that there’s a real opportunity for helping women today, in a way that I don’t think exists too much when it comes to the choices of ok, razzle-dazzle magazine and Vogue covers. That can be very intimidating to the consumer. They’re somewhat cut off and feel somewhat distanced from what fashion should really be about and what it’s grown apart from, which is, “What do I wear to work on Monday? What do I wear to my son’s birthday party? What do I wear to my 50th anniversary party? What do I wear to a bat mitzvah on Saturday night? And the choices become harder and harder because we keep pumping imagery of feathers and beads and couture shows and women on elephants half naked in a Harper’s Bazaar shoot. Which must exist because it’s inspiration, it’s fantasy, it’s dreamy, it’s kismet, it’s Tony Duqette, it’s Randolph Duke. But, now, how do we translate that for the woman who loves all that, but also wants to be able to go to work. And I want to be very clear that I’m very interested in that. And in many ways that’s just as creative, in some ways more creative in figuring out how to solve that puzzle. And that’s some of the direction I’m going to be going in the future, because I find that wildly exciting in figuring out how to help women. It’s empowering–because when you empower people you are empowered.
