San Francisco-born and New York-based costume designer Miyako Bellizzi might have begun her career in fashion editorial but she has since become celebrated for her ability to unlock characters and build entire filmic worlds through costume. Across a decade-long collaboration with the filmmaking duo Josh and Benny Safdie, Bellizzi has delivered costumes that feel as essential to the films’ visual language as the restless camerawork and erratic plot lines. Some have become enshrined in the public consciousness: take Connie Nikas’s (Robert Pattinson) red hero jacket in Good Time or Howie Ratner’s (Adam Sandler) canary-yellow polo and black leather jacket in Uncut Gems. 

Yet Bellizzi’s real craftsmanship often happens at the edges of the frame. Her meticulous attention to background costumes – paired with the street-cast ensembles selected by Jennifer Venditti – gives the Safdies’ films their gritty, documentary-like atmosphere. Every extra is given their own sartorial story, turning the screen into a vibrant mise en scène. 

Bellizzi’s latest project reunites her with Josh Safdie – this time without his brother – for Marty Supreme, starring Timothée Chalamet and Gwyneth Paltrow. The film marks A24’s most ambitious project to date: it is the production house’s highest-budget feature and highest-grossing release. 

Set in 1952, the film is anchored in New York’s Lower East Side but cuts between a range of settings: Japan, New Jersey, London and even Auschwitz. Following her work on The History of Sound with Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor, Marty Supreme is Bellizzi’s second period piece – unless, as some suggest, Uncut Gems (set in 2012) now qualifies as vintage. 

Ageing the costumes was central to the film’s hyperrealism. Out of the more than 3,500 garments seen across the 149-minute table-tennis spectacle, Bellizzi and her 20-person in-house tailoring team built nearly half themselves, distressing fabrics to achieve their lived-in quality. 

At this year’s Academy Awards, Bellizzi earned her first nomination for Best Costume Design. In the lead-up to awards season, Monocle’s Annelise Maynard spoke with Bellizzi to discuss her route into costume design, what changes – and what doesn’t – when moving to a production of this magnitude, and which costume from Marty Supreme she thinks might become the film’s defining image. 

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Listen to the full conversation on Monocle on Fashion. 

Many people might not know that you began your career in fashion media, working at ‘Details’ and ‘Vice’. How did that experience inform your approach to costume design?
When I moved to New York more than 20 years ago I had this big dream of working in fashion. I started my first internship at Details, assisting the editors. That was my introduction to men’s fashion. I then moved to Vice at a time when they were very anti-fashion. They came at fashion from a photojournalism approach, which opened my eyes to how fashion captures stories. When people ask me how I got here, I feel like that’s not the normal approach of how you get into costume design. When I left Vice I was making small independent films with friends in New York. I remember my first small film. I used all my own clothes, worked with friends, had no budget and wasn’t getting paid. I think about those years and how informative they were to my career now. 

You’ve worked with the Safdie brothers before on ‘Good Time’ and ‘Uncut Gems’ but ‘Marty Supreme’ operates on a completely different scale. Not only was it A24’s highest-budget film, it has now become its highest-grossing release. Did stepping into something of that magnitude change your process?
Marty Supreme is Josh [Safdie] and I’s third feature together over the course of 10 years. We have this spirit – it’s like Marty’s spirit – in the way that we approach films. You see it in the way that it’s presented; you have to go into it head-on. The stakes were higher, and there were more cooks in the kitchen, but really it’s the same approach that we had for Good Time and Uncut Gems. 

The costumes have this beautifully lived-in feel. How did you achieve that and why was it essential? 
Ageing the pieces was super important to us. In period films it’s a big pet peeve of [Josh Safdie’s and mine] when you see that everything is brand new. It was really important to make sure that everything was lived in. Having the support of a team experienced in working on period films really helped me because I don’t know everything. I had an incredible MTO (Made-to-Order) and ager/dryer team. It was tricky because when you’re using vintage from rental houses, you can’t ruin the beautifully preserved clothes from the 1930s and 1940s. They’re very delicate, so ageing the pieces was out of the question. We decided to build a lot of [the clothes] ourselves so that we could break the costumes down.

​​When we first meet Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow), she feels muted and unhappy in her life. But by the end, whether for better or worse, she’s found a new vigour through Marty’s youth and passion, represented by the red cape gown. What choices did you make in curating this evolution, and what fashion houses or figures informed Kay’s style?
Kay was a 1930s film star but we meet her 20 years later. I wanted to showcase what it was like to be a woman at that time. I wanted to show what it would be like to be in her marriage and how to keep up as a socialite in New York. She’s dead inside and so she begins in these muted black and whites. In the 1950s there were so many new designers – Dior, Givenchy and Balenciaga. For me it was about considering someone that was aware of these changes in fashion but kept it understated as an older woman. Marlene Dietrich and Grace Kelly were big inspirations for me. Meeting Marty brought colour back into her world a little bit. I [showed that] with colour theory and fabric but also in the silhouettes. I wanted to keep her very sophisticated.

And then with Marty, there’s obviously so much going on with his character. His clothes are often a bit too big, almost like a boy performing his masculinity. For such a complex character, how do you capture that reach, that pretence, in his costumes?
Showing Marty’s reach and pretence was the biggest challenge when designing his costumes. Considering how we could show these qualities without overdoing it, in much more subtle ways. I selected styles mainly from the early-to-mid 1940s, the jackets were longer, the shoulder pads were bigger and the pants were wider. I wanted things to look ill-fitted. We made the sleeves and the body of the shirts larger so that they’d billow more. It was also about what a person like Marty would have realistically bought in the neighbourhood. He’s not shopping at the best places. I wanted it to feel like he had his own sense of style, without it being overly stylised. 

Your work on previous Safdie films has created instantly iconic looks. Do you have a sense of which costume might endure as the defining image of this film? 
There are so many characters in this film so it’s really tough to choose one look. When I think about what will be the defining costumes of this film, I think about Rachel (Odessa A’zion) but it’s Marty’s suits that are really the look of Marty Supreme. I go back and forth between the brown one and the grey one. Ultimately it’s the culmination of all of the characters and how they come together that makes the world of the film so vibrant, but also real. Having glimpses of all these different worlds within Marty’s world was very important. 

You are nominated for your first Academy Award for Best Costume Design. How does it feel? 
It’s interesting because when I think about costume design, I usually think about the fantastical types of films. My work on Marty Supreme – being deeply rooted in hyper reality – feels a bit different. I think about some of the other women who are up for nominations, such as Kate [Hawley] for her dresses in Frankenstein that are just so unbelievably beautiful. It feels surreal to be compared to all these other films and their costumes. It’s very cool to be recognised, and having so many people resonate and be inspired by this film and the costumes.

Pretty much every headline that has heralded Nepal’s new prime minister, Balendra Shah, has referred to him as a “rapper”. This is not inaccurate – he owed his early prominence to his prowess on the mic – but it is a little misleading. More pertinently, if less picturesquely, Shah is also an impressively qualified structural engineer, and has served a stint as mayor of Kathmandu. 

The emphasis on Shah’s career in hip hop – Nephop, as the local variant is known – is mostly an attention-seeking device employed by headline writers for global news outlets wearily aware that Nepalese election results do not usually rivet the passing scroller. But there is an implication of frivolous novelty, a suggestion that we should be amused and/or horrified that a mere “rapper” has been chosen to lead a nation.

The transition from rapper to prime minister is not necessarily as incongruous as it might seem. If nothing else, “successful rapper” is a more convincing résumé for a candidate for high office than “serially bankrupt real estate huckster and failed casino proprietor turned game show host”. There is an overlapping skill set between the rapper and the politician. Both need some command of rhetoric. Both need to be able to hold a crowd. Both require expertise in distilling complexity into punchy, memorable phrases. 
     
And Shah is not the first. His most obvious kindred spirit is the Ugandan rapper Bobi Wine, who was elected to parliament in 2017 and ran for president in 2021 and 2026, losing both to interminably serving incumbent Yoweri Museveni, amid plausible claims of dodgy dealing, including repeated arrests of Wine – who has been in hiding since casting his vote in January. Elsewhere in Africa, Tanzanian rapper Professor Jay, prominent practitioner of the local genre known as bongo flava, served a term as MP for Mikumi. Julius Malema, combustible figurehead of South Africa’s Economic Freedom Fighters, is not a recording artist as such, but his rallies regularly feature call-and-response chants: much to the discomfort of his opponents, these are very much not of the wave-your-hands-in-the-air-like-you-just-don’t-care variety.
    
At least two rappers have sought their homeland’s very highest office. The artist formerly known as Kanye West ran for the presidency of the US in 2020, and received 66,641 votes across the 12 states where he got on the ballot. Wyclef Jean attempted to run for president of Haiti in 2010 but was disqualified for failing to meet residency requirements. That election was won by another musician – Michel Martelly, who, under the name Sweet Micky, had been a huge star of the Haitian dance music known as kompa. In power he proved, regrettably, both a thug and a crook, a gangster politically if not musically.
     
Rappers who enter politics might reasonably observe that far more politicians have attempted to rap. This usually occurs in mercifully brief bursts when the office holder or office seeker in question is attempting to demonstrate their down-ness with the kids – but at least one has taken it more seriously. Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, former president of Turkmenistan (now Chairman of the People’s Council of that eccentric central Asian nation after handing the job off to his son), has occasionally released videos of his self-composed hip hop stylings, which have been of a quality you can really only get away with in a country where laughing at the head of state is punishable by a stretch on the salt piles. Justin Trudeau, former prime minister of Canada, has appeared in a rap video, though he has the excuse of parental obligation, the artist in question being his son Xavier, who trades as Xav.
     
It is no more or less absurd for a rapper to be prime minister or president than it is for any other type of performer. As long as people insist that their politics be entertaining, entertainers will prosper in politics. It doesn’t even have to be a bad thing: the greatest national leader of our age also voiced Paddington Bear and won the Ukrainian version of Dancing With The Stars. The test is always how well any given troubadour, jester or harlequin adjusts from the dramatic, simplistic sloganeering of the rebel outsider to the minutiae, nuance and drudgery of government. NWA did not urge “Reform The Police”; Public Enemy did not implore fans to “Legally Seek and Then Judiciously Exercise The Power”.

Andrew Mueller is a contributing editor at Monocle. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.

If you were to look up at the Finnish firmament over Joensuu and see a large, shiny silver object floating silently through the air, you could be forgiven for thinking that you’ve seen a UFO. Though it looks like a product of extraterrestrial fabrication, it is simply an airship developed by Finland-based company Kelluu to gather high-resolution data over vast areas. Measuring 12 metres in length, these high flyers hark back to the Zeppelins of the early-20th century, though they combine the precision of drones with the scale of satellites.

Hydrogen-powered fuel cells keep the airships aloft for long periods of time, even in extreme cold – such as a recent trip over Lapland at minus 30C – and all while delivering scalable, high-quality data that has drawn Nato’s attention. Joensuu’s proximity to the Russian border means Kelluu regularly contends with signal jamming and spoofing. The result is a fleet designed to operate reliably even in heavily contested electronic environments.

The company was co-founded by Jiri Jormakka, who previously ran a software business and developed a deep interest in aviation. Yet it was the challenge of merging hardware, software and operational logistics that truly drew him in and led to him setting up Kelluu. Jormakka joined Monocle to discuss the company’s airborne technology and why its silent, hovering presence has caught the attention of conspiracy theorists.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

When I hear of airships, I think of the Second World War or 20th-century blimps that soared above sporting events. Tell us a bit about how Kelluu’s airships differ from those Zeppelins of old.
Technically, the term we use is unmanned. They are like drones but they use lighter-than-air tech to stay up, and they are 12 metres long. So compared to a fixed or multi-computer drone, they’re big, but if you take an airship that was used 100 years ago, they’re small.

As hydrogen is lighter than air, what does that mean in terms of range and reliability? 
Because we use hydrogen as a lifting gas [and as a power source], we are not using any energy to stay up. We use energy only if we move or stay in one location when there’s wind. This gives us extremely long operational flight hours. We are also not using batteries as a main power source but with the hydrogen fuel cells we can do missions in extremely cold weather. 

What floats to mind are the incredible applications this would have from, say, a military or defence perspective. But I guess there are so many others, such as infrastructure or environmental monitoring. That must be one of the great selling points.
Exactly. What our tech actually can do better than others is that it enables a super-accurate digital model of the world. We are basically doing aerial photography in the same way drones do: we are close to the object ground surface, so we get really high-quality data. Unlike drones, our airships have the quality to stay up for an extremely long time and therefore provide the most accurate data.

What led you to start this company? 
I have a sports background and a business education. I had a software business earlier and I knew a bit about aviation. But in the beginning we only had the idea, so I needed to be simple and dumb enough to not know everything. If I had known how hard this would be, maybe I wouldn’t have done it.

Almost every entrepreneur that I speak to on this programme says something along the lines of ‘my naivety is a superpower’. Does naivety help because you can ask questions that a veteran of this sector wouldn’t think to ask?
That might be true. Now we have really good professionals working at Kelluu, and we’re scaling up rapidly.

Talk to me about manufacturing. Does Kelluu own the whole process from supply chain to delivery?
It’s a service. We decided to build and operate the system, collect data and process the data. It’s our turnkey solution because on the civilian side customers don’t want to buy anything that moves or is a machine, they only want the information. On the defence side, they want to buy actual things [such as hardware].

Let’s talk about Arctic security, because Finland has a very long border with Russia. This technology must be increasingly valuable in terms of monitoring. What kind of role are you playing, or hoping to play, in that space?
We are a Nato Diana Phase 2 company, so we’ve been working with Nato and defence for a few years now. As to what is happening across the border: I see it as multi-layered, in the sense that you need information from different layers including space, high altitude (aeroplanes and so on), lower altitude (drones), fixed wing and then ground layer. We are really good at low altitude – below cloud level – and Arctic conditions. That is our niche area.

You have a marketing hat as well. Do you have to go back to basics when you’re selling this product?
The best-case scenario is that I can show, not tell. We are deploying our capabilities across the EU right now and even North America. It helps that people are seeing what we can do, and seeing our data feed and how it helps the end users in different nations. I hope lighter-than-air will come back and will play its part in the big Nato picture.

Where could this technology go at a greater scale? The loads are relatively modest in terms of what these airships can carry. But what about other potential civilian deployments? Could they be a mobility solution down the track?
These are mass manufacturable and we are building more all the time. They are emission-free, a really cost-efficient way to have assets in the air and collect data worldwide. The plan is that we will build hundreds of thousands of these and it will help the whole of humankind to understand what direction Earth is going in. So far this is the best way to collect super-high-quality data from large areas.

What about integration in broader civil-aviation infrastructure? There are big narratives about drone interference around commercial aircraft operations, for example. How does Kelluu fit into and work with those existing frameworks?
Our headquarters and factories are located just next to the Russian border in Finland. So we have 24/7 free GNSS [Global Navigation Satellite System] timing, and that’s where we are doing all the R&D. It’s safe to say that we are GNSS resilient when we are operating. So I hope that we will be part of a nationwide aerial survey solution in which unmanned aviation and manned aviation can co-operate to provide information on different things.

The aircraft have a spaceship vibe about them. Do you hear from people thinking that they’ve seen a UFO? 
The airship floats so it’s super silent and it moves differently compared to drones or fixed-wing assets. So yes we have some UFO action happening. There’s all kinds of video footage, rumours on X and on Reddit from people who don’t know what they have seen. I’m sure that we are the most famous UFO company from Finland.

Listen to the full conversation on ‘The Entrepreneurs’. 

Read more about the airship industry.

“Shall we go for a little walk? Grab a coffee nearby?” he asked. It sounded like a perfect start to a sunny Saturday in March. After all, we’d both earned it. He’d already been up and at it for a few hours while I’d stayed out far too late on a school night. Nevertheless, we were both in position at 08.50 sharp on an upper floor at the Embassy of Canada to Japan and for the next 40 minutes it was Monocle in conversation with prime minister Mark Carney. (If you’d like to watch, listen or read one of the leader’s biggest sit-downs since taking office, be our guest. But if you’d prefer to flip through an extended version with some added tips for brand Canada, you can subscribe or pre-order the April issue here.) 

I’ve known Carney since he was governor at the Bank of England and as his friend for the better part of a decade it was an added bonus to wander the back streets of Akasaka, enjoying a coffee in the sunshine and watching him greet visiting Canadians and local Japanese who wanted a photo or to simply say thank you. While I’ve always felt Canadian (despite a strong Estonian upbringing and living in Europe for more than 30 years), I can’t say that I’ve been particularly proud of late. There have been a few moments of pop culture and brand greatness that gave a nudge of patriotism and perhaps the first 10 days of Justin Trudeau felt promising – but it has been a lacklustre run for Canada despite all that it has going for it.

When I went to visit the PM shortly after he took up residence at Rideau Cottage early last summer (the country is in dire need of a new official residence but Carney has done a decent job with this family-sized fixer-upper), you could tell that things were about to change – or better yet, tighten up. Out went the comedy socks and footwear with Trudeau. Gone too are the poorly cut suits and weird ties. Carney is cutting a proper dash around the world (how fitting that he features across six pages in our April style issue) as he not only shows up for summits looking the part but dazzles with the quality of his speeches and conversation. For sure it’s important to be judged on what is said, agreed and delivered but Canada has been in need of a leader who shows up looking presentable and knows what’s required to host, impress and build bonds.

Canada is starting to rekindle dormant relationships and reboot areas that were closest to being defunct. To be sure, the task of sharpening brand Canada is considerable but thankfully the resources are bountiful and the human capital formidable. From aviation manufacturing (Bombardier) to agriculture, payment platforms (Shopify) and cranking out the hits (Shania, The Weeknd, Celine, Mendes, Alanis, Drake, Bublé), there are plenty of global brands that might want to shout a bit louder and not allow themselves to be mistaken for hailing from south of the border. Likewise, young Canadians need to get out into the world for years and not weeks, to build international experience and networks to match. If Carney can secure a majority government in the coming months and govern with confidence, then Canada has a handsome future ahead. Cheers to meeting and greeting the world pressed, polished and on point.

Enjoying life in ‘The Faster Lane’? Click here to browse all of Tyler’s past columns.

You would think that John Bolton would be happier. The former US ambassador to the United Nations and former US national security adviser has been advocating for American military action against the Islamic Republic of Iran for decades. In 2015, Bolton wrote an op-ed for The New York Times entitled “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran”. Even then, he wrote, “Time is terribly short but a strike can still succeed.”

In the two weeks since US president Donald Trump gave the go order for Operation Epic Fury, Bolton has been noticeably critical of the means, if not the ends. Those with memories reaching back to the early 21st century, when Bolton was regularly caricatured as the sharpest-beaked of hawks, might be bemused to hear him sounding like a voice of relative moderation. 

It is no secret that Bolton and Trump do not get on. The president sacked Bolton as national security adviser in 2019, partly because he was weary of Bolton’s uncompromising views on Iran. Last year, Bolton was charged by the Department of Justice with unlawful retention and transmission of national defence information; this might be related to the unflattering depictions of the president in Bolton’s 2020 memoir, The Room Where It Happened. Trump said the book was made up of “lies and fake stories”, and called its author “a disgruntled boring fool who only wanted to go to war”, among other imprecations.

It is Trump who has gone to war, however. Two weeks in and it would be easier to say if Operation Epic Fury was going according to plan if it had ever been made clear what the plan was. With due acknowledgement that nobody knows how this will end, Bolton joined Andrew Mueller on The Foreign Desk to discuss the Iran war, intervention compared with negotiations and the US administration’s aversion to clear planning.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

War with Iran is what you’ve long been calling for, at least since that piece in ‘The New York Times’ in 2015. Is this what you wanted or expected it to look like?
What I was advocating then was destroying [Iran’s] nuclear capability, which I think was appropriate at the time and is still a good thing to do today. The real need today is regime change in Iran and that is very possible, given how unpopular and weak the regime is. That doesn’t mean that the way Trump is going about it is going to produce that result. He has made a lot of unforced errors and I’m worried that he hasn’t laid the proper basis for making the case to the American people, Congress or [US] allies. 

Is it important that it be done now?
I would have liked to have seen it done 20 years ago. I don’t agree that the threat of a nuclear Iran was imminent but I don’t think we’re obligated to wait until the threat is imminent. Because if we did, we might miscalculate and be too late. Iran’s support for terrorism and the fact that it has, since 1979, been responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans through its terrorist activity, makes it a perfectly legitimate thing to do.

If a threat isn’t imminent, doesn’t that imply that measures short of war are still available?
It would depend on the regime. This one has never shown any evidence of abandoning a strategic decision to acquire nuclear weapons or to discontinue terrorism in the Middle East and around the world. So negotiation with the regime is futile. The idea that you just have to keep [negotiating]… that’s how North Korea got nuclear weapons. Twenty five years of endless talks while it continued to make progress.

Doesn’t an intervention such as this create an incentive to build nuclear weapons – and not just for Iran but other regimes trying to protect themselves?
That risk is out there today. The fact is that we have stopped nuclear proliferation in the past and we could have stopped it a long time ago. Our unwillingness to do so, and to wait so long in the case of both Iran and North Korea, is really just proof of what Winston Churchill once said about the confirmed unteachability of mankind. How many times do we have to go through this to recognise that some regimes are not going to negotiate in the spirit that we do? They have objectives and they use negotiation not to achieve a resolution of the problem but to give them time to get to the answer they want.

Are your reservations about the current action not so much about the what but the how? Do you ever fear sounding like one of those die-hard ideologues who complain that ‘proper communism’ has never been tried?
No. The end result of regime change is shared by 80 or 90 per cent of the population of Iran. The question is, how do we help them to do it? Of all the mistakes that Trump has made, it’s the lack of co-operation with the opposition, lack of assistance to the opposition, that might be the worst. He seems almost indifferent to the Iranian opposition, as he seems indifferent to the opposition in Venezuela, which he has kicked to the curb in favour of Delcy Rodríguez to replace Nicolás Maduro as president.

Does it not give you any pause that you couldn’t convince several more orthodox US administrations to do this, while the one that has gone ahead is this one?
Well I don’t know why Trump changed his mind. I certainly tried to persuade the same man in his first term to do it and I didn’t succeed. It’s clear that, for whatever reason, he changed his mind. But that doesn’t mean that he also changed his modus operandi. It’s still the same confused, uncertain, disconnected approach that he had in the first term. And that’s a risk.

Is there not a danger that if this operation is being steered by people who are poorly advised, that you end up with a situation even worse than the one we have?
It’s inconceivable to me that you could have a government in Iran worse than the one that we have now.

Are you not concerned about long-term reputational damage to the US? That much of the world sees this as reckless? We’ve heard Pete Hegseth disdaining what he calls ‘stupid rules of engagement’, which are presumably what stops you putting a Tomahawk missile through a school.
Well, you’re talking about defects of personalities, of which there are many in this Trump administration. The policy, the objective, it seems to me, is entirely defensible, unless you’re sanguine about a nuclear weapon going off over your head someday.

How optimistic are you about how this thing, which you have long advocated, is going to turn out?
Well I didn’t advocate for this [war]. I would have done it substantially differently. My criticism is because I think that Trump’s mistakes will quite likely result in this failing and make it harder to instigate regime change in other situations.

So in the admittedly unlikely event that your phone rings and it’s the president saying, ‘Alright, this isn’t working out, what should I do?’, what would you tell him?
Work with the opposition inside Iran. Work with the ethnic groups. Work with people who have been affected adversely by the economy. Get with the young people who despise the regime, who know they could have a different form of life. Get with the female part of the population that has been protesting ever since the murder of Mahsa Amini three years ago for refusing to wear the hijab. The discontent inside the country is enormous. It’s not well organised but there are ways to get to an interim government after the Ayatollah and the Revolutionary Guard are removed – for Iranians to consider what they want their next form of government to look like.

But is that not a recipe for chaos itself? You could end up recreating Yugoslavia with 92 million people.
You could do a lot of things. You could also leave this regime in place and have them murder 30,000 citizens every other month.

To listen to the full interview on ‘The Foreign Desk’, click here.

Behind every auteur is a company of artists, technicians and specialists bringing his or her vision to the big screen. Guillermo del Toro is one such director who, over the course of a 30-year career, has become synonymous with a hyper-stylised neo-gothic aesthetic, bridging both the historical and futuristic in most of his works. One of the artists helping to usher in his vision is Kate Hawley, the costume designer behind the blood-red corsets and bedraggled fur capes of Del Toro’s Frankenstein. 

After winning a slew of awards for her work on the film, including at the BAFTAs and Critics Choice Awards, she is a front-runner to take home an Oscar from Sunday night’s ceremony. Hawley joined Monocle Radio’s Lily Austin on Monocle on Fashion to reflect on the process of bringing the monster to life. 

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

How did you come to work on this project? 
I was very familiar with the novel and revisited it when Guillermo told me that we were making his version of it. The start of everything always comes from the script and your director’s vision, including themes of nature and theology. Creating the designs was a matter of working with all the other departments and then building on that language, finding and discovering ways to interpret it. With nature and religion there are certain shapes and imagery that were echoed in the set, and Guillermo asked me to reflect the set. He always talks about how the costume is the architecture, the architecture is the lighting. We all work very closely as departments. It all came from trying to find a mood and a tone on this operatic scale that Guillermo was building. He talks about his banquet table, and it’s a bloody big one. We were all invited, as different departments, to sit at this table and collaborate.

Del Toro’s films are always cohesive. But everything really works together in this one in particular. So I wasn’t surprised when I read that you’re also a set designer. Does that help you to create a co-ordinated look and feel for a film?
Yeah, I think so. Because you’re always dealing with character within a landscape, whether that landscape is artificial or real; it’s the world you’re building in the tones. I did a bit of scenic painting at the English National Opera and I learned about colour. And so all of those things have informed how I work with Guillermo and the rest of the team. We’re always echoing each other’s work and painting across our different departments. 

I was really struck by the use of colour in the film. This is a period piece but it felt quite modern. Were you consciously trying to achieve that blend? 
When Guillermo and I were talking about Frankenstein he was very insistent that we didn’t get locked in an old world. He wanted a contemporary, modern feel. That was a directive in terms of the wardrobe: that it doesn’t sit in a Dickensian world. The red veil is a classic way for Guillermo to open a story. You establish the operatic language right from the beginning, and then that becomes the throughline. That red veil becomes the stained, bloodied hand on young Victor Frankenstein, it becomes the glove. So you have a throughline that Guillermo is establishing with the colour red, and we go in a circle with that.

You collaborated with Tiffany & Co for the film. Will you tell us a bit about that?
When we told the crew they were so thrilled, and it meant that there’s a certain shared love of craftsmanship and appreciation for what the other was bringing. It never felt as if things were being imposed on us. It was the language of what they had in the archives. The biggest moment for me was looking at the archives and seeing all the things that I was not familiar with: the art glass and the jewellery. It fitted Guillermo’s language so perfectly and supported the story and the character of Elizabeth. Sometimes things just open the door and they keep presenting more and more wonderful possibilities.

More reads about award-winning costume designers
– Interview: Catherine Martin on the riviera glamour and ‘barefoot luxury’ of her Miu Miu collection

– ‘You have to go into it head-on’: Oscar-nominated Miyako Bellizzi on kitting out ‘Marty Supreme’

“How are you finding the mood this year?” People would ask as they came to the Monocle Radio booth at Mipim, the world’s largest real-estate fair, which concluded yesterday in Cannes. The question was prompted by events in the Gulf, which some guests feared were about to deter interest-rate cuts, trigger a surge in material costs and dampen any enthusiasm for investment risk – all just as things had been looking up. It was clear that, these days, our interviewees are reading reports from defence correspondents as much as the financial pages.

The Iran conflict was not the only issue causing furrowed brows. Architects and civic leaders also wanted to talk about the affordable-housing crisis hitting numerous cities across Europe. Ian Mulcahey, the global director of cities and urban design at architecture firm Gensler, also noted that it had become the biggest and knottiest issue for many of the places that he visits. “Every city we work in seems to have a housing crisis and I still can’t quite work out why. We, as a civilisation, haven’t figured out how to build enough homes for the people that live in our communities,” he says.

The starkness of the issue was underlined by London’s deputy mayor for housing and residential development, who revealed that while London is estimated to need an additional 88,000 housing units every year, last year the figure of new starts was closer to 4,000. Mipim, as part of its Housing Matters event that kicks off the week, sought to put leaders from Barcelona to The Hague on stage who could offer solutions – but there is clearly much work to be done.

Others who visited Monocle were feeling far more optimistic, even sensing some positive changes for the industry. Giorgos Karampelas, creative director at Athens-anchored K-Studio, told us that his company’s take on luxury – free of fuss, using materials well, focusing on a sense of place – was finding new audiences far beyond Greece’s borders.

Snøhetta’s co-founder Kjetil Thorsen said that his prestigious architectural practice was only working with clients keen to raise the bar on genuine sustainability, such as Mehmet Kalyoncu, the developer behind the Ion Riva project on the Black Sea. “I don’t think we’ve ever [conducted] this amount of studies on a particular piece of land,” said Thorsen. “We now know everything – even how the smallest drop of water is moving down the hill. We want to enhance these qualities, let nature tell us where to build and where not to build.” 

It was also interesting to see how national confidence was robust in some places, especially in southern Europe. Numerous Italian mayors, for example, were present at the event and throughout the week, we hosted the leaders of Rome and Genoa. Each talked about how they were witnessing a moment of generational change as their cities became centres of technology and innovation, sought to attract talent and deliver on sustainability ambitions. Raffaele Laudani, the deputy mayor for urban planning of Bologna, explained how his city is positioning itself.

“Bologna has become a key strategic European hub for big data and artificial intelligence. We are hosting the second strongest supercomputer in the world for AI, the so-called Leonardo, and around it a new ecosystem of knowledge and technology is emerging,” says Laudani. “We have 80 per cent of the computing capacity of the country and almost 30 per cent of the European one. And now there is a [network] of research centres and the operating university. We are redefining the overall policies around this flagship project that we call the City of Knowledge.”

Though the mood this week was a little strained in places, this is an industry that plans for the long-term and is accustomed to riding out geopolitical squalls. Plus, many opportunities – from data centres (the sessions on this sector were standing room only) to the needs of ageing societies – are not going away. Perhaps that’s why most people left the Palais de Festivals in Cannes looking resolute, even if they were keen to secure a soothing glass of rosé on the Croisette before heading home to everywhere from Berlin to Baku.

Andrew Tuck is Monocle’s editor in chief. To hear more from Monocle Radio’s guests this week at Mipim, listen to the latest episode of ‘The Urbanist’. There will also be a second show from Cannes next week.

This month Monocle has been at Mipim, the world’s largest real-estate fair and urban festival, which takes place in Cannes. Inside the Palais des Festivals, the main exhibition space, we built a Monocle Radio studio, hosted a party and drank a lot of coffee. The interviews that we gathered are destined for our podcasts and the magazine. But here are a few other takes on a week in the south of France.

Don’t get too smug
Monocle will be 20 years old next year. We’ve come a long way over that time and at Mipim numerous readers and partners sought us out at the Monocle Radio pavilion to share their appreciation. But sometimes, even after all this time and even when you are standing under a large “Monocle” sign, there can still be some explaining to do. “How long have you worked at Monaco Magazine,” one nice man asks. “It’s not Monaco Magazine, it’s Monocle,” I say, carefully emphasising every syllable to avoid any more confusion. I point at our lovely signage to stress the difference. He computes the new information. “But do you live in Monte Carlo?” he asks, refusing to believe that he’s got this totally wrong. I give him a copy of the magazine. At least he didn’t ask if I worked at Manacle Magazine, the trade title for those employed in the incarceration industry.

Some people have it figured out
In 1987, Kjetil Thorsen co-founded Snøhetta in Oslo. Today this multi-disciplinary design and architecture practice has more than 300 staff, allowing it to take on big projects around the world but still hold on to a studio ethos. Thorsen came in for an interview to talk about his work on a project in Turkey where, as always, he is being sensitive about sustainability. He’s a mountain of a man, gives a fantastic handshake and talks in a considered tone that would make him ordering toast sound enthralling and important. I could have spoken to him all day because he’s also figured out what he enjoys about his work, where the red lines are and what society needs from architecture. He’s a walking wisdom machine. I have added a note to my to-do list: “Find inner sage, practice handshake”.

Guest guessing
Honestly, I do listen to what they are saying with intent but when you are stood at the mics, your guest just a couple of feet in front of you, you do find yourself scanning their outfits, noting their body language (you can tell in seconds who will immediately engage with you, who is nervous or fears saying a single word that might play out badly with their electorate). It usually works out. The man who undoubtedly rocked the sharpest look was Manfredi Catella, CEO and chairman of real-estate company Coima. It was a wide-shouldered affair that had an air of a 1980s Armani number. The tie, the shirt, the slick grey hair – all so right. You’d buy anything from him. So that’s another one for the to-do list: “Buy an adventurous suit.”

Guest booking is an art form
And that’s why, at Mipim, I leave running the interview schedule to Carlota Rebelo, Monocle Radio’s executive producer. Everyone knows that she’s the gatekeeper and is not to be messed with. And anyway, the only person to corner me about getting someone on the schedule was a gentleman who wanted to know whether we’d like an interview with Miss Poland, who was in town to promote her nation’s real-estate offering. Fearing muddling Carlota’s planning, I declined. In the end, Carlota managed to secure 42 interviews with city leaders, famous architects and powerful developers. But she did come up short on the beauty queens.

That’s a wrap
By the time it came to pack up our stand (to be honest, that’s also not me but our wonderful engineer David Stevens), we had met players in the industry from Saudi Arabia and Florida, and been briefed on projects, politics and the players to watch. And I had also set one man right about my lack of Monaco media connections. 

To read more columns by Andrew Tuck, click here. And to hear from just some of the people that we met at Mipim, listen to this week’s episode of ‘The Urbanist’ – the first of a two-part special from Cannes.

Lisbon has seen a remarkable urban transformation over the past decade. The city has become a hub for entrepreneurship and home for expats seeking the sun while record levels of tourism reflect the global interest. Mayor Carlos Moedas has been at the forefront of dealing with the challenges this cosmopolitan capital is facing, as he told Monocle at Mipim in Cannes.

Lisbon has become one of Europe’s most attractive cities. How do you deal with the welcome challenge of managing its growing appeal?
This is probably the biggest challenge you can have as a city. Attracting young talent is fantastic but you have to invest in social welfare to counterbalance the idea that if people come to your city, the real-estate prices increase. Since my first term I’ve maintained that for every euro the city invests in culture, innovation or technology, we need to invest tenfold in social welfare. For example, in Lisbon, people over 65 have a city health plan where they can call a doctor to their home for free. And we now own more than 22,000 apartments, which means that nearly 12 per cent of our population lives in housing owned by the municipality. That’s not just social housing but also affordable housing, so that professionals can afford their rent and are able to live in the city. Nowadays social welfare is much more dependent on cities than it is on the national government. That’s the most important ingredient for innovation, for technology and for creativity.

Urban regeneration is happening at a rapid pace. How do you balance keeping tradition while promoting a vision for a more modern Lisbon?
Lisbon is unique. When I compare it to other cities there’s something that you can’t describe, almost like the soul of the city. As its mayor it’s crucial [that I] maintain that identity. So we’ve created different programmes; there’s one to protect historic shops and another for owners of small libraries. One of the most successful initiatives is a programme in which we loan spaces for free to locals who might want to start a business in their neighbourhood. Some have become cafés, others tailors or small independent shops. These shopfronts would otherwise be empty and by helping people to create their own businesses, we are adding to the identity of the city. 

Lisbon has invested significantly in waterfront redevelopment in the past 15 years, embracing the Tejo river with museums and reimagining old industrial buildings. Is there more to come?
Yes. There’s still a lot to be done. The first thing, and this is probably the biggest one, is a bit of my own dream for Lisbon – to properly connect the city to the waterfront. We have a train that comes from Estoril into Lisbon and essentially puts a cut between the city centre and the river – I want to add infrastructure to move this below ground so that people can walk from one side to the other. But that’s a 10-year project that can’t be done in a day. Then I want to turn to transportation. We are building the first new tramline since the 1960s to connect the centre of Baixa with a new park to truly make the east of the city alive and kicking. Lisbon is at the top of its game so we have to be careful with the next steps. It’s more difficult to stay on top than it is to get there.

As you return to the waterfront, how are you adding resiliency to these projects so that Lisbon is able to endure the risks posed by the climate crisis?
We have [implemented] one of the biggest adaptation climate change works in Europe today. Since 2022 we have invested more than €150m to build two large tunnels that run under the city to help manage the flow of water – one of them is five kilometers long and has just been completed. This means that when it rains, the water is redirected to the tunnels and we don’t have floods. I’m very proud of it because very few cities are doing this kind of adaptation and the work is invisible to the eye. All that people know is that we don’t have floods but they don’t know why. That takes a bit of courage.

A flash point for many cities is tourism management. How do you mitigate against overtourism as a city leader?
Lisbon has roughly 575,000 residents but there are a million people that come into the city every day, with tourists being about 40,000 of them. We’ve redesigned the tourism tax: not only have we increased it to €4 per night but, for the first time ever, cruise ships are now also paying the tourist tax for each passenger. 

One of the strategies that we used was looking at the fact that not everyone is going to be in the same place at the same time. So we’ve created what we describe as a journey into contemporary and modern art next to the river, with the creation of two new museums: one [dedicated to] the works of Julião Sarmento, the other of Almada Negreiros. And this is all about getting tourists to different parts of town. That’s the only way you can manage the flow and have rules. We also cut 6,000 licences for short-term lettings and implemented strict regulations so that there will be a maximum of 10 Airbnbs for every 100 regular [housing options]. At the moment [the ratio is] 65 short-term rentals per 100 flats. That’s totally excessive and needs to be reduced.

What’s your favourite neighbourhood for a Sunday walk?
Alvalade, which is a 15-minute neighbourhood where you have everything within walking distance. It’s a bit removed from the city centre but you get all the best that Lisbon has to offer.

What’s the best way to commute in Lisbon?
I take a lot of public transport and I make a point of travelling by bus every Friday. It’s the best time of my entire day and I learn a lot. I love the 711 bus.

Where do you go for a coffee?
I usually start my mornings with a nice cappuccino at a place right next to city hall called Fábrica, which has a very international crowd. And then at midday, I go to the typical small establishment for my daily pastel de nata and café [espresso].

What’s your favourite thing about being mayor of Lisbon?
The people of Lisbon. I’ve had amazing moments as mayor but I’ve also had difficult moments, and the people of the city were always by my side – even those that didn’t vote for me. We have amazing people and when you’re a foreigner and you come to Lisbon, you always feel like you belong because lisboetas make you feel welcome. There are very few places like that.

To explore Lisbon properly, consult Monocle’s City Guide. 

1.
Get an architect to design your stand
Among the numerous stands for nations, cities and projects at Mipim, only a few stood out for being beautifully conceived. One of these was Soundscapes of Albania, which was designed to resemble a record shop. The concept was the work of architecture firms Studio Precht and W10, with creative agency Kube Studios supplying graphics and branding. The pavilion was rendered in terracotta red, and some 80 projects by a roster of global architects were promoted. Each scheme was presented as a record sleeve with the promotional material tucked inside. There was also a custom-made vinyl record, featuring Albanian music from the 1920s to the modern day. Oh, and they flew in a DJ. Despite all the property players fighting for attention at Mipim, it took Albania to show why you should hire an architect to design your space.

2.
No, really – get an architect
Another standout was the Ion pavilion. The Ion Riva development on Turkey’s Black Sea coast is the work of architect and developer Mehmet Kalyoncu and will feature residences designed by practices including MVRDV, Bjarke Ingels Group and Snøhetta. It was the latter that stepped forward to design Ion’s beautiful stand. At the centre of the space was a vast circular table, which hosted talks twice a day on topics such as what makes a house a home. The table also doubled as a stage for musical and dance performances. From food to materials, everything was on point.

3. 
And there was Monocle too
Monocle has been attending Mipim for more than a decade and, for the second year in a row, it has held a pop-up Monocle Radio studio and lounge. Our space was cosy and welcoming thanks to the Spanish lighting and product company Santa & Cole, our partners for this outing to Cannes. Radio had never looked so good.

4.
Pack a map, a topographical map
Our heart went out to the shipping companies tasked with delivering numerous vast topographical maps to Cannes. The London Pavilion displayed an epic effort, built by Piper Model Makers at 1:2000 scale, which allowed attendees from the UK capital to precisely locate their homes. Paris had a nice interactive map (pictured) that encouraged lots of button-pushing to reveal what was being erected. But perhaps the biggest example was for a section of the Diriyah project, a new neighbourhood on the outskirts of Riyadh. Measuring some 14 metres in length, it displayed ambitious plans for a new grand avenue. The owners of all these maps were happy to reveal that, more than any render or digital tool, it was seeing a model that most easily sold the vision to attendees.

5.
Dubai is a role model for aspiring nations
Sea Breeze is the name of a huge project on the Caspian Sea coast in Azerbaijan that, in addition to numerous residences and hotels, will also become home to the country’s F1 track and a casino. Set to eventually house 500,000 people, the first phase is already open and includes 45 restaurants. The developer is Emin Agalarov, an Azerbaijani pop singer who managed to pull in large numbers of attendees for his promotional sessions. 

He was very open about the fact that he’s borrowing ideas from Dubai. While the emirate has the Palm man-made island, he’s building the Half Moon Island. Dubai built the skyline-defining Burj Al Arab with a silhouette that looks like a dhow; Agalarov has commissioned an apartment building in the shape of a luxury yacht and named it The Caspian Dreamliner. “There’s no need to try and invent the bicycle,” he says. “My job as the master developer of this project is to find the best-case scenarios and adapt them to my market.”

6.
Make space for your robots
Hubert Rhomberg is the managing director of Rhomberg Holding, headquartered in Bregenz, Austria. He’s the fourth generation of his family to run the business, which is now involved in everything from building data centres to creating a new cultural hub in Vienna. He’s also a believer in AI and robotics. Rhomberg says that, as robots start working in our homes and offices, we will need to consider their needs when designing spaces. Just as servants once used hidden staircases in castles and manor houses to deliver food and linen, these new helpers will also need architects to consider how they might manoeuvre themselves around a building without getting in the way of humans.

7.
Could there be a Baghdad renaissance?
Ian Mulcahey is global director of cities at Gensler, the world’s biggest architectural firm. He is involved in a project that he hopes could provide a model for repairing and aiding post-conflict cities: the Baghdad Sustainable Forests masterplan will transform 10 million sq m of a bombed military facility into a new green lung for the Iraqi capital. “Baghdad desperately wants to try and say to the world, ‘We’re open for business’,” says Mulcahey. “And the day that I saw their brief was the day that I said we want to do this project because rarely do people say that the centrepiece of their urban redevelopment is to build an urban forest.” While the project is still in its early days, it is good to see that architects have the skills to repair not just buildings but identity and hope too. Let’s hope that regional events don’t deter the ambition.

8.
Developers be aware: we don’t like to wait
The key manufacturers of lifts and escalators were all present at Mipim. These businesses see themselves as mobility players and, in a competitive market, many were promoting new products. One of which responded to the needs of an ageing society with a new generation of lifts for domestic settings. 

We wanted to understand the psychology of the lift: how long will people wait before getting grumpy? Bora Gülan, CEO of TK Elevator Europe and Africa, revealed that depending on the setting, you have 20 to 60 seconds before the huffing starts. In an office? “The good waiting time is 20 to 30 seconds – and you need to be able to handle 12.5 per cent of the building’s population in five minutes,” says Gülan. Get your stopwatches out and see how well your building’s lifts perform.

9.
You can engineer a city to stop the brain drain
The mayor of Genoa was in attendance to explain how she is re-engineering her Mediterranean city to make it appealing to young residents. Part of her solution is delivering 40,000 units of student housing, getting active with the new Granarolo-Begato Sports Park and the redevelopment of the Luigi Ferraris football stadium. Why is sport at the forefront of the dynamic mayor’s plans? She’s a retired Olympic hammer thrower.

10.
Don’t forget China
Stephan Schütz is an executive partner at Germany’s biggest architectural firm, Von Gerkan, Marg and Partners. The practice works on everything from concert halls to airports but Schütz is also focused on when not to build but adapt and reuse instead. He suggested that we look to China as an ambitious and active proponent of this approach. “I don’t agree with the thesis that new buildings happen in China and renovation transformation happens in Europe,” he says. “China adapts to new situations and new needs very quickly. For example, we have completed a net-zero high-rise building in Guangzhou for Chinese clients. They used a completely prefabricated building method with robots assembling the pieces on site. So there were nearly no people on site for a 200-metre-high property.” It’s a brave new future for the industry.