Mark Bridges On Charting Lenny Bernstein’s Rise to Prominence Through His Clothes for ‘Maestro’

Bradley Cooper’s Maestro is one of the most elegant films of the year. You can feel the passion that the director has for Leonard Bernstein and the world of New York City that he helped mold and create. Cooper’s film charts Bernstein’s rise from that fateful phone call inviting him to conduct at Carnegie Hall to the immense loss he felt for his wife, Felicia. Costume designer Mark Bridges was eager to chart Bernstein’s creative rise and impact, and the results are mind-blowingly gorgeous.

We see Bernstein conduct several times throughout Maestro, and every tuxedo or tails is different. The outfit he wears in that already beloved cathedral scene is different from the first time we see him take the podium. Bernstein explains that a lot of care was brought into the first suit Bernstein conducts in. It’s slightly larger in the shoulders, and it feels like the conductor has room to grow as a person as he grows as an artist.

“I’ve only found one photograph of him from that day afterwards when he is backstage,” Bridges says. “His brother writes about remembering that day where Lenny asked them to stay in New York to see him conduct. He describes what his brother wore. I had one visual from the chest up to see how the suit and the collar fit him, and then we had the words from Burton [Bernstein]. We went off of that. It was very typical for a man to have one good suit in those days–certainly a young man just out of college. That suit took him to business things to performances. I thought it was important to do something distinctly 1943, which would’ve been a double-breasted suit. Someone asked me at a Q&A once why I didn’t make it gawkier, and you make decisions along the way that have to add or take away things. It’s the first time that we see him in the film, so I wanted it to have a pleasing impact but also very detailed and specific. He’s wearing a solid neck tie in that original photo. It allows him and the moment to shine through.”

The transition from black-and-white to color hinges on the front and back of Carey Mulligan’s Felicia. As her husband is performing on stage, she is watching him in a grand dress with large, elbow-length gloves. Then the scene changes and we see Felicia from behind, a striking blue dress wrapped around her body. There’s a shimmer to the material that is absolutely exciting, and it’s an example of how the costuming shows the furthering of the plot and of time.

“That was a happy accident,” he admits. “We are jumping about fifteen years, and that was a kind of fabric that was used often in a lot of dresses. We found a prototype that had a great shape that was an original dress but it was white. It wasn’t going to work. We sent swatches out and found the fabric. This was just a beautiful piece of fabric, and we remade it perfectly. You design for Felicia Bernstein at the Dakota with the matching pearl accessories, so I was trying to be very specific. Lo and behold that’s how Bradley, always in good taste, used that moment to switch to color. I love how it worked out, because she is very cool and we see those warm curtains next to her. I liked how it popped against each other.”

In a pivotal scene, Felicia watches affection transpire between her husband and his lover, Tommy Cothran. Felicia is draped in a dark navy–in some shots, it almost looks black–with dangly, elegant earrings and while the dress is based on something that the actress actually wore, Bridges reveals how it felt like fate when it came to dressing the emotions of those scenes.

“There were only two photographs that I could find from the opening of Mass,” he says. One [photo] is in color, and we could see how navy that blue dress was, and it’s shot above the waist. You can see the neckline, and I thought the vibe felt right. My cutter and I landed on what we thought that dress could be, and we got a story from Jamie Bernstein about how her mother was wearing diamond and sapphire earrings given to her by Lenny. Maybe it was an apology gift? But Felicia didn’t like them at all. We had earrings loaned to us by my assistant costume designer, and they are so beautiful. It felt kind of inappropriate when you think about it all together. It ends up really communicating that how, according to Jamie, Felicia was not happy that night.

When the film screened at the Venice Film Festival, I was sitting next to Nina Bernstein and when that scene came on, she picked up her handbag and pointed to it. She brought with her the handbag that her mother took to the Mass premiere. That’s how close and involved we were to the story and this family’s history. It was so exciting for me, but it was trippy.”

There were two looks that I swooned over. While being interviewed at home, Bernstein sports a cream, textured cardigan sweater. It almost matches his white hair, and it hints at how his fashion as casualwear has changed. It’s homey, but classic.

“I’m discovering that a lot of people like [that sweater],” he admits. “I looked through the book that the characters are thinking about making, and there is a photograph of Lenny and Felicia running with their kids at the country house. There is a great image of him all in white, and I thought, ‘This is a maestro moment.’ Who wears cream head-to-toe with some desert boots out in the country? Of course, the maestro does. It’s something that Lenny would’ve worn, and it felt right to place that in a moment that felt like an arc of a lifetime.”

When Bernstein comes home during Thanksgiving (just in time for Snoopy to crash the drama), he’s swathed in browns and dark tones. He’s hungover, and it feels like he’s still wearing the dark liquor on his body.

“I was obsessed with that, too,” Bridges says. “I needed a holiday hounds tooth wool to make that jacket that had all right colors like harvest orange, maroon, and green. It felt, somehow, like you would wear it in autumn, and it needed to work with a maroon turtleneck. Sometimes I get a bug in my mind where I have to find a specific thing. You don’t see it very much, but he has this shearling coat thrown over his shoulders. It’s very maestro with the sunglasses and the coat–he’s arrived, and he’s hungover.”

With every viewing of Maestro, I have discovered another texture or how another shade strengthens and elevates the emotions and themes of a scene. Bridges does that beautifully with every film, and, with Cooper’s film, he expertly mingles history, fashion, and drama to create outfits that come from these character’s souls. Of all the things that Bridges would steal for himself, he knew exactly what he would pick.

“Oddly enough, I want the white tie and tails,” he says. “You don’t see that often these days unless it’s across the world at a royal event. Sometimes you will see it at the Met Gala. It’s the height of formality, and Lenny wore it with such ease. It was quite commonplace in his day, and I think I would like to wear that in the right way someday and have it made properly. There are funny proportions of how long the jacket hits and where the tails hits. The height of the trousers. I see it a lot in classic films, and it’s vaguely archaic, in a way. I want to see if I could pull it off.”

Maestro is streaming now on Netflix.