In the 20 years since Kill Bill: Volume 1 premiered, it’s all but impossible to make it through Halloween without seeing someone dressed in a canary yellow tracksuit with a black racing stripe, a schoolgirl with blood seeping from her eyeballs, or an old-school nurse with a conspicuous eyepatch. For costume designer Catherine Marie Thomas and director Quentin Tarantino, that is high praise (maybe even moreso than an Oscar). “He felt like the biggest compliment was that he always saw them at Halloween,” Thomas says.
Beyond costume parties, the film’s impact still radiates through the zeitgeist. From the more androgynous approach to a female heroine in a sea of sexy catsuits, to the once-defunct sneakers that are threatening to dethrone the Adidas Samba as ‘It’ shoe, the sartorial longevity of Kill Bill is impressive.
The costume designer—who has since worked on 27 Dresses, The Proposal, Mr. Robot, and The Flight Attendant—worked in tandem with Tarantino to create some of the most instantly recognizable costumes. “Not all directors have such a love for costumes. He truly does,” she says. “And he knows that it not only affects how the viewer feels when they see them, but it also affects how the actors feel in those clothes, because it changes so much about their performance and how they approach the character.”
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There is probably no greater example of this than The Bride, played by Uma Thurman. (Thomas was good friends with Thurman’s husband at the time, Ethan Hawke; Thurman pitched the then-unknown Thomas as costume designer to Tarantino.) Initially, Tarantino had envisioned The Bride as a femme fatale in a sexy, tight catsuit, à la Halle Berry in Catwoman. But Thomas was interested in taking it in a different direction.
“There’s definitely this trope of the female hero that’s always in this very sexy, badass [outfit],” Thomas says. “I kind of wanted to play with the gender part of it—her embodying the boys club and borrowing from the boys, and taking that strength and using it.” Instead, Thomas borrowed Bruce Lee’s yellow suit from Game of Death, and made it her own.
The decision to turn a sexy catsuit into a two-piece tracksuit was one of practicality, too. Thurman had given birth to her son, Levon, in 2002, just prior to filming. “She was not super excited about wearing a onesie after just giving birth,” Thomas recalls. “She was like, ‘Seriously, Quentin, you want me to wear like a onesie?’” So Thomas devised the now-famous tracksuit, allowing Thurman some ease for breastfeeding and pumping. “My approach was to keep the same sort of visual lines, but to break it up so that she would be more comfortable. At the time, I changed the lines a little bit so it wasn’t so like straight, I made it a little bit more of a flare because it was more it was just more flattering,” she says. “I gave her a little more shape and made it so that she could zip in and out of it so she can actually breastfeed because it was too hard to take it off all the time.”
Thomas pulled inspiration directly from the runway for her adaptation of the Bride’s suit. “Prada was doing these really great moto flared pants,” she says. “You could see how it was definitely an influence at the time.”
Another piece of Thurman’s classic costume is all but inescapable today: Onitsuka Tiger Mexico 66 sneakers. The shoes weren’t in production at the time of filming, though Thomas wanted to model them off of Lee’s Game of Death look, so she reached out to the brand for help. “They did truly bring them back for us,” she says. “We had so many pairs of them. It wasn’t like we needed like two pairs—we needed like 60 pairs, between Uma and her stunt doubles, and all the blood.” Today, the sneakers have just as much relevance as they did 20 years ago. No matter how many celebrities try out the style, the Mexico 66 (especially the popular black and yellow colorway) is inextricably linked with Kill Bill.
The sneaker brand wasn’t the only collaborator on the shoot; Thomas worked closely with costume designer Kumiko Ogawa for the more traditional Japanese costumes. When it came to O-Ren Ishii’s (Lucy Liu) snow-white kimono, Thomas knew that the intricacies of the traditional garment needed to be perfect for the assassin-turned-Yakuza boss. “Kimonos are such a very specific art form. There’s such skill and making them—it’s hundreds of hundreds of yards of fabric. It was so fun to collaborate with her and have these cultural counterpoints,” she says. “That world had to be very traditional, very real, because the audience would know if it wasn’t authentic. And that really is O-Ren’s character. She had to be intimidating.”
The white of Liu’s kimono was something of a foil to Thurman’s bright yellow tracksuit. Emblematic of a more buttoned-up character at the peak of a hierarchical world, O-Ren’s clothing was—quite literally—very black and white. Not to mention, it was the perfect canvas in a notoriously bloody film. “White traditionally, on camera, you’re gonna see blood. The starkness of the white works so cinematically that there was no question about it,” Thomas says.
Even minor characters had strong sartorial choices. We first meet the assassin Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah) in the hospital as she prepares to finish off The Bride. She strolls down the hall in a white coat, pants, and shoes with black trompe l’oeil belts and pockets from Moschino’s fall 2001 collection (worn on the runway by Alek Wek), with a matching eyepatch and a red umbrella. In another scene, Hannah’s character sticks to the color scheme, but changes into a slightly sexed-up take on a traditional nurse’s uniform with a red cross on her eyepatch.
It was crucial for Thomas and Tarantino to make the moment a foundational for the character, who plays a major role in Kill Bill: Volume 2. “That that suit was just so perfect for it. It was a departure point, we just knew this is perfect. It’s such a strong introduction to her.” The trompe l’oeil in particular was an exciting visual cue to the audience. “In Quentin’s movies, the characters aren’t always what they seem, and so to be able to play with that visually is really fun,” she says.
Thomas’s costumes are one of the reasons the film is so relevant today. When Thomas looks back, 20 years later, she is still exceedingly proud of being ahead of the curve in creating a female hero who isn’t so reliant on sexuality. “Borrowing from the boys can be really powerful because you’re taking something as a woman, and you’re switching it around,” she says. “Now there’s so much androgyny in fashion anyway, but even 20 years ago, not so much.”
