Famed Aussie designer Catherine Martin admits major fashion faux pas

Celebrated costume designer Catherine Martin admits her and Luhrmann’s daughter was ‘appalled’ by one of her recent wardrobe choices.

As a four-time Oscar winner, Catherine Martin is used to dressing Hollywood’s A-list for the silver screen. But at home, the costume designer faces a much tougher critic. In an exclusive interview with Stellar, Martin reflects on a career that has spanned Strictly Ballroom to Elvis, raising a family, collaborating with her director-husband Baz Luhrmann, and now receiving a special honour at the upcoming Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards

She was the sartorial brain behind Nicole Kidman’s top hat and sequinned corset in Moulin Rouge!, the chic flapper aesthetic of Carey Mulligan in The Great Gatsby, the light, feathered angel wings Claire Danes wore in Romeo + Juliet, and, most recently, all those leather jumpsuits and flashy flares Austin Butler sported as Elvis Presley in Elvis.

No matter the decade or the star, Oscar-winning costume designer Catherine Martin has always brought a unique sense of sparkle to the world of film fashion.

In the process, she has become one of Hollywood’s most celebrated designers – in collaboration with her director-husband Baz Luhrmann.

Catherine Martin: ‘Every day I feel like I’m just getting started.’ Picture: Christopher Ferguson for Stellar

But there’s one critic who isn’t always impressed by the Australian maverick’s own looks: 19-year-old Lillian Luhrmann.

“My daughter is appalled that I still wear skinny jeans,” Martin says with a laugh, speaking to Stellar from the Gold Coast. “She says, ‘Mum, they’re going in the bin.’”

While Lillian has been known to raid her mum’s wardrobe, she can get disappointed by Martin’s habit of giving her pieces away.

“I just pulled a bunch of things out of the closet to give to the Powerhouse [Museum in Sydney],” Martin, 57, relates.

“And somehow, between me pulling them out of the closet and getting to the Powerhouse, certain items were not included in the delivery.”

There’s only one person who’s to blame and that person rocked up wearing one of those missing pieces,” she adds coyly of her daughter’s sticky-fingered escapades.

Having now extracted the AWOL items, Martin says they’re being cleaned and packaged for donation as planned.

That’s because Martin believes her ensembles will have more impact if displayed than they would hanging in a wardrobe at home.

“What turned me into a designer was being able to go to the Powerhouse or the Victoria & Albert Museum in London or The Met [in New York] – museums that had costume collections where I could actually see the clothes in reality,” she reflects.

“I think that’s a very important resource for costume designers.”

Pinpointing a favourite look from her three-decade career is an impossible ask; she won’t speculate about future projects, either.

“I wasn’t that enthusiastic about designing can-can costumes when Baz brought [Moulin Rouge!] up with me, and it turned out to be one of the most interesting adventures, understanding this whole world of entertainment under women’s skirts,” she explains.

“So, I’m always very wary of making any kind of broad pronouncements because, when I was [studying at Sydney’s National Institute of Dramatic Arts], I very famously said I will never design anything brown, and then cut to me on Australia and everything is brown.”

While Martin and Luhrmann met at NIDA in 1982, their first cinematic pairing came 10 years later with Strictly Ballroom.

But Martin’s love affair with cinema started when she was just a young girl watching classic movies like Gone With The Wind and The Wizard Of Oz.

“My father was a great aficionado of the silent film era of the ’40s,” she recalls. “So a lot of my childhood was watching those movies with him telling me about performance, about the techniques, and about who the designers were.”

Catherine Martin: ‘It was really important to stay together as a family even if that meant moving our kids around.’ Pictiure: Christopher Ferguson for Stellar

An inspired Martin got her first sewing machine at age six; by her teens, she was creating her own patterns and dresses.

“The last time I sewed was when we were in a big rush to get some country-and-western shirts on set for Elvis and I was behind the sewing machine getting back to my roots, so to speak,” she reveals.

“But I just don’t have a permanent set-up. One of the things I fantasise about is having a permanent room where I can actually have my dress dummies and all my machines set up.”

For the moment, Martin, Luhrmann and their two children, Lillian and William, 17, call the Gold Coast home.

They fell in love with the area while shooting Elvis, but living by the beach, Martin laments, means that salty air has already caused the motors of one of her sewing machines to rust.

Martin acknowledges that juggling the demands of her career – which takes her to film sets across different parts of the world – has been tricky to navigate and that before basing themselves in Queensland, the family had divided their time between Sydney, New York and Paris.

“We just made the decision that it was really important to stay together as a family even if that meant moving our kids around, and sometimes they weren’t happy about it,” she concedes.

“But there are many kids – military kids, kids who have parents in the diplomatic corps, and [kids of] CEOs who work for big brands – who move from one posting to another. It has its disadvantages.”

I think it’s very challenging at times for children, but then it makes you able to make friends and be adaptable and appreciate different cultures and ways of doing things.”

Their globetrotting lifestyle has also meant that many of Martin’s belongings remain in boxes, and the family joke about where her Oscar statuettes will end up.

When they lived in an historic house in Sydney’s Darlinghurst, “we used to quote The Castle and say, ‘That’s going straight to the red room’, instead of ‘This is going straight to the pool room!’” Martin recalls.

Catherine Martin features in this Sunday’s Stellar. Picture: Steven Chee for Stellar.

“Eventually, I think we would like a place in Australia, a family home, where all those special souvenirs can go. But so far, we haven’t quite managed to do that.”

And it is an impressive haul of “souvenirs”.

Martin’s four Oscars (two for costume design, one for production design and one for art direction) place her alongside Colleen Atwood and Milena Canonero as the most decorated living costumer designers at the Academy Awards; they’re behind only legends Irene Sharaff (with five) and Edith Head (with eight). Martin also has five BAFTAs and a 2003 Tony Award (in scenic design for the musical La Bohème).

This year, she will receive the highest accolade at the AACTA Awards, the Longford Lyell Award, bestowed upon a person who has made a truly outstanding contribution to the enrichment of Australia’s screen environment and culture.

“It’s a great honour, and it will be a pleasure to celebrate it with all my colleagues who will be in Sydney for all the craft awards,” Martin says.

“Although, when someone says you’re getting a lifetime achievement award, you do start to think about how old you are and hope that this isn’t all there is.”

Because every day I feel like I’m just getting started.”

The AACTA Awards air at 7.30pm, December 7 on Network 10, with an encore at 7.30pm

on December 10 on Foxtel’s Fox Docos. It will also stream on demand via Foxtel, Binge and AACTA TV.

Originally published as Famed Aussie designer Catherine Martin admits major fashion faux pas