The Who What Wear Podcast: Frankenstein Costume Designer Kate Hawley on Mia Goth’s Ephemeral Looks, del Toro’s Color-Coding, and the Tiffany & Co. Archives
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Who What Wear
4.7 • 3K Ratings
🗓️ 5 November 2025
⏱️ 32 minutes
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Summary
Kate Hawley is the costume designer for Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein. In this episode, Who What Wear Senior Fashion and Social Editor Tara Gonzalez sits down with Hawley to discuss how she worked with longtime collaborator del Toro on his retelling of the classic tale. Hawley walks us through her extensive research process, shares why her team used such a saturated color palette, and highlights standout accessories from the film—like the Frankenstein family crest and Elizabeth’s scarab beetle necklace—that were custom-made by Tiffany & Co. Plus, Gonzalez predicts which item worn by Mia Goth’s character she thinks fashion people will embrace after seeing the film.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Who What Wear podcast. |
| 0:12.4 | You direct line to the designers, stylists, beauty experts, editors, and tastemakers |
| 0:17.3 | who are shaping the ever-evolving world of fashion. I'm Who What Wear, editor-in-chief, |
| 0:23.0 | Cat Callings. And today on the podcast, our senior fashion and social editor, Tara Gonzalez, |
| 0:28.5 | is joined by costume designer Kate Hawley. Kate's most recent work can be seen in Guillermo del Toro's |
| 0:34.7 | Frankenstein. The movie, led by Oscar Isaac, Mia Gough, and Jacob |
| 0:39.2 | Alorty, will be streaming on Netflix in just two days. Today, Kate tells us what it was like |
| 0:44.2 | to team up with Del Toro again after working with him for years to bring his vision to life. |
| 0:49.2 | She impacts the symbolism of standout pieces like Victor's blood red leather gloves and |
| 0:53.6 | Elizabeth's multi-layered Victorian |
| 0:55.6 | wedding dress, as well as how the changing color palette of the film tells the story of metamorphosis |
| 1:00.6 | within each character. Plus, she shares the historical references she used when working on the |
| 1:06.1 | period piece and how she paid homage to past interpretations of Frankenstein. |
| 1:13.2 | It's all coming up on who what, where. |
| 1:23.7 | Thank you so much for joining me, Kate. |
| 1:28.0 | I saw Frankenstein two days ago, and I've been thinking about it ever since. It was was absolutely incredible and I've been bragging to all my friends who haven't seen it yet. So obviously |
| 1:32.5 | Frankenstein was directed by Academy Award winning director, Guillermo del Toro, who you've worked with |
| 1:38.6 | extensively. So I'd kind of love to hear a little bit about how did you guys first get connected. |
| 1:43.4 | Oh, yeah. Well, we're going back |
| 1:45.7 | a little while now. Yeah. It's amazing how that creeps up. But he was in New Zealand and he was having |
| 1:51.9 | meetings with Peter Jackson about The Hobbit and Peter had me sort of scuttled in the corridor somewhere. |
| 1:57.0 | I was sort of like Miss Havisham working there on another project and there was sort sort of the pad of bare feet. Peter walked in him, and behind him was Guillermo. And they just stood around and chatted and we were talking about work. And Guillermo looked at my bookshelf. He basically just looked at all my books. And I had this wonderful collection of horrors. You know, I had Caravaggio, Goya, and I had Joel Peter Wittkin. I was going through that |
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