Twilight Costume Designer Tish Monaghan on dressing the Twilight stars on Eclipse

SELF: How is Bella's look in Eclipse different from in New Moon?
Tish Monaghan: Well, it's funny because the movies come out a year apart, but onscreen, only a week has passed. With Bella [Kristen Stewart], she's a little more settled in public and in her relationship with Edward. And so, at the beginning, I wanted to show a little bit more of a relation to the Cullens' colors, a cool palate, and steer away from the warm earth tones that were more evident in New Moon.

There are quite a few romantic scenes, so I wanted to show a softer side of Bella without going too girly or feminine, because that's just not at the heart of who she is. She's a very practical person, so I tried to soften her up a bit with color. We open up with her wearing one of her signature plaid shirts, but it's in a softer, lilac fabric and looks very pretty in a field of flowers. We tried to retain the integrity of her character, but just lighten her up a little.

And how about for the boys?
In New Moon, Edward [Robert Pattinson] is essentially in a suit throughout most of the movie because he almost gets frozen in time on the night of Bella's birthday party, when the tragedy occurs. So he sports that look of a restrained, contained individual throughout the film. I wanted to ensure that in Eclipse, we brought him back into the world of a grade twelve student. I wanted to make a point of getting him back to t-shirts and jeans and sneakers, a more casual look while maintaining the Cullen's flavor, which is always a little more styled - I mean, he's never going to look too rough and ready. We wanted to get him out of the gentlemanly quotient and into clothes that look good and fit nicely, but seem a little more youthful. For Jacob, the only thing I changed was I put him into some cutoff cargo shorts instead of cutoff jeans. We ended up using a lot of the same t-shirts because they fit him so well.

It must be fun to dress Ashley Greene as Alice, the fashionista of the family.
It's fun to go out and look for the cutest, girliest and edgiest things you can find. We bought her a really great Marc Jacobs' dress that she wears in an opening scene at school, and a really adorable fitted little A-line coat that we got from Anthropologie. It's just nice to find these little feminine lines with a lot of detail and a cute little belt, great tuft detail, little bow at the back. I know she really particularly loved that one, a little taupe plaid.

Bella, on the other hand, at Bella's graduation party, she wears jeans and a button-up shirt and everyone else is dressed to the nines. Bella dresses for practicality. We got a really nice dark-green hoodie by Voeu T Laxe at Fred Segal - that would be her signature piece for Eclipse. She's also got this great grey American Eagle jacket that she wears for most of the final sequence of the movie when she's climbing up into the mountains and a Lole burgundy shell with a nice little female shape.


Where are you usually shopping for the characters?
Well, we had to be able to buy in quantity - especially with stunt doubles. The characters would have to have six of each outfit for themselves, and then four or five for their stunt doubles. So we weren't spending tons of money on each outfit! We went to G-star, Club Monaco, Armani Exchange, H&M, Banana Republic. All the brands you see in the movie are out there in the public domain.

Eclipse has a lot more action than the first two movies - how did you dress the characters for their fight scenes?
With all of the workout wear, we wanted to create a look that was slick, sleep and functional. They could look good and make a visual statement, but be ready for action. Emmett had a lot of action, so I wanted him to stand out more than others. I gave him an Old Navy hoodie with a beautiful tone to it. I didn't buy it at Old Navy because it was cheap, I bought it because it was a creamy off-white reminiscent of the color he wore in the original Twilight. When everyone came in for their fittings, we would ensure that they could lift their legs high enough when they were running - sometimes we would get them a larger pair of jeans for certain sequences just so that they did have that movement. You don't have to stick to just workout wear - we would end up getting a cute hoodie at H&M. I just wanted to give the characters something the audience could interpret as "OK, this is what the Cullens wear when they're out exercising." But, again, it's form-fitting clothing they can move in.

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Bonus: Find out how the Twilight stars stay in shape on set!

What brands were you using as workout gear?
We used Mountain Engineering Co-op, a Canadian outdoor company, North Face, Nike, the Gap. We would bring them everything for all kinds of scenes - J Brand, 7 for All Mankind, etc. - and it ended up being Gap that they'd love and go buy for themselves. I didn't want everybody in jeans, but I certainly wasn't going to put them in sweatpants or anything like that. And then when we moved to the very final sequence where they have the fight with the newborn vampires, I wanted to make it look like they were really dressed for action and I put them in very very dark colors, like black or almost black.

Eclipse also uses flashbacks to give us some background on the histories of the Cullens and the Quileute indians.
These movies are awesome for a costume designer because we were able to go back into three different time periods, as well as the contemporary world. We had Jasper, who used to be a Confederate soldier - he was one of my favorite characters to dress for this sequence because I love research. We found a source that made Confederate uniforms for reenactments, and we probably put about forty hours of over-dying and aging into it so he looked real and presentable when he's riding across the rolling hills, kicking up dust on his horse.

And with Rosalie, who has a flashback to the 1930s, we were able to use some pieces that were original '30s costumes. Then we had to make a wedding dress for her that had a 30-foot train and long, billowing veil for the scene when she's coming down this long hotel hallway with her mind set on attacking her fiancé who had actually almost killed her. It's a fantastic scene, because there's this transition from her being this sweet 18-year-old woman who's madly in love with her elegant, wealthy - and, unbeknownst to her, evil - fiance.

The most exciting part, to me, was recreating the Quileute indians - we would read diaries and shipping logs from Spanish explorers who sailed along the Pacific coast, we would study paintings from the era by traveler Paul Kane, and we studied original garments at the Museum of Archeology in Canada. We had to make, I would say, sixty costumes, including a costume for Bella, because she transitions into the role of one of the Quileute characters, the chief's wife. We worked on those garments for probably about six weeks with a team of about eight people: we made jewelry from abalone shells, we interwove different colored pieces of wool blankets into white blankets, we made shoes for them out of rough cord, we made our main garments out of groundcover which is incredibly itchy for the people wearing it, and we made a cedar cape - big rough wraps of twine and hemp that ended up looking, you know, in the big brushes as if they were woven cedar. It was really a challenge, and I'm so pleased with how it turned out.

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Eclipse costume designer Tish Monaghan reveals secrets and trivia from the movie

• Robert Pattinson wanted to wear karate pants for the training sequence. “So we got him some karate pants, and it’s like the crotch hangs down to the knees, and I just thought, Ugh. Who’s gonna go for this? Because everything has to be approved by Summit,” Monaghan says. “We took them in a little bit, and they loved the karate pants. Who knew? I was so surprised.”

• Even at the film’s premiere, people squealed when Taylor Lautner turned around in that black T-shirt. “It was almost embarrassing. I felt so bad for him,” Monaghan says, with a laugh. “They were screaming and going ‘Wooooo!’” As she’d done on New Moon, her M.O. was to put him in smaller size Gap or Banana Republic T-shirts to emphasize his biceps, tightening the tees around the arm holes and taking them in down the side. (Pattinson wore Gap T-shirts, exclusively, she adds. “They were what fit him best. They had the best colors. So that’s what he ended up wearing, even when Edward takes Bella up to the tent. It may strike people as odd, but he doesn’t feel temperature, so that’s why we only put him in a shirt, and Bella’s all bundled up, and Jacob, of course, is running around shirtless.”

• Rosalie’s wedding dress was the star of a deleted scene: For Rosalie’s flashback to the 1930s, Monaghan’s department both rented original period dresses and made two ensembles — the one she wore when she was attacked, and her wedding dress. “Unfortunately in the film, we only see her arriving at the door,” Monaghan says, of the latter’s entrance. “I’m not sure why the scene with her floating down the hallway was cut out — maybe it’s because the element of surprise had a stronger impact. They didn’t want us to know in advance who was coming to the door. But we made a silk train for her that floated down the hallway as she kind of hydroplaned down the carpet. [Actress Nikki Reed] was mounted on a contraption, almost like a bicycle seat, and the camera was in front of her and to the side, and she just when whoooooooosh. She was rolled down the hallway at quite the speed and a fan would blow up her veil so that it was trailing behind her. It looked wonderful. The train itself was probably about 10 or 12 feet, and then the veil went beyond that.”

• Riley (Xavier Samuel) has great taste in victims: “The sensibility of all of the newborns, including Riley, is that they’re scavengers. They’re going to steal pieces from whomever they find. Riley just happened to find somebody who was wearing a G-Star jacket and some really cool jeans,” Monaghan says, with a laugh. “Once he was turned, I just wanted to put him in something that was edgy and very contemporary. We wanted to make him young and powerful but still have this kind of dark sexiness to him. We found this great G-Star jacket for him and tight, tight jeans and a beautiful Paul Smith shirt. And then he had one other change after that, which was the same jacket and tight reddish maroon jeans, which for us was important because once he got into battle with the Cullens and the werewolves, we had to separate the newborns from the Cullens color-wise. We had to make sure that there wasn’t any confusion as to who was on whose team when a body was flying through the air. So with the Cullens, we intentionally put them in black, dark navy or dark gray. With the newborns, we put them in earth tones and hints of brighter colors.”

• There’s a bit of old Victoria in new Victoria. “Because of the transition from Rachelle Lefevre to Bryce Dallas Howard, we decided that the first time that we saw Victoria, we should definitely put her into pieces of the costume that we had last seen Victoria wearing in New Moon, just so that the audience, aside from her large mane of tangled red hair, would definitely know that this is who that character is. There’s all these things that you work on so hard, and then it ends up becoming such a subliminal thing,” Monaghan says. “Gradually, we transitioned out of that into something a little bit different to make it Bryce’s own character. Because she was going to be courting Riley, I wanted something that was dark and foreboding but still sensual, because she has to lure him. We made a black lace top with a zipper that kind of went around her neck, and you could unzip it as far down the front as was necessary. Just a romantic/punk look. It works really well with her red hair, and her skin showed through, and you could see that she was being a little bit of a siren and trying to work her magic on Riley.”

• Emmett wears lighter colors than the other Cullens to showcase Kellan Lutz’s muscles. “Absolutely,” Monaghan says, when asked if this theory about his Old Navy hoodie is correct. “I also knew that the focus was going to be on him and his chase with Victoria in the woods, so I just really wanted to make sure that he stood out amongst all the dark backgrounds…. You probably won’t notice, but I made a very conscious decision to have the Cullens move through the color palette. They’re in lighter colors when they first hunt Victoria. The next big scene, when they’re in their workout wear, they’re in sort of midtones. Then when they have the final battle, that’s when I put them all in black, because I wanted them to be more stealth-like.”

• A lot of work goes into seconds of screen time. Take the newborn army Jasper (Jackson Rathbone, in a uniform purchased from a company that clothes reenactment societies, then aged as though he’d been riding in the desert for months) trained in his Civil War flashback. “It’s so fast, but for us, we have to do the work and prepare for that scene just as much as we would for any character,” Monaghan says. “They were scavengers from the 1800s, so it was a mix of garments that they grabbed from different armys, bankers, merchants, hookers.” The siren who turned him and leads the army is actually wearing his jacket and sash over her skirt. “That’s just me trying to show the link between the two of them,” she says. “For us, it’s the challenge in doing all of these thematic linkings that makes our job worthwhile. It’s important to do it, even if nobody else notices.”

• It takes a village to build a village. Unearthing what the Quileute tribe would have been wearing in the 1700s, before photography, was another challenge. Monaghan turned to ship logs from explorers who landed on the Pacific Coast and described the natives’ jewelry, their cedar bark clothing, and their dog-haired blankets. She looked at works by artist Paul Kane, and visited two Canadian museums of archeology with extensive native artifacts unearthed from burial sites. “We took all of this, and we said, ‘How are we gonna make this cheaply?’ Because we found someone was selling a recreated cedar cape online for $25,000 a garment. We ended up making them out of ground cover used in landscaping. We got something like 200 feet for $25,” Monaghan says. “So I had a whole team of people who made it one-time wear. We went to a taxidermist, and we got bones. We went to restaurants and got mussel shells. We went to another place and got abalone shells, which we used for our jewelry. We made hats out of straw baskets from Chinatown. We used wool blankets and raw silk. I was so happy with the outcome of recreating the Quileute village in the 1700s. I just thought it worked spectacularly for its, I think, 10 seconds of screen time.”

• You almost saw Kristen Stewart in a swimsuit. That’s what Bella was wearing in the script when she was saying goodbye to her mother and the sun. “Realistically, that’s never gonna look good on anybody if they’re just lying there. If they’re gonna dive into a pool and swim, maybe,” Monaghan says. “I just approached the director and said, ‘Listen, can we just do cutoffs or something instead?’ I think originally, we were going to shoot on location [in Florida], but instead, we shot in Vancouver. The temperature was not warm at all, and we wanted to keep them comfortable as well.”

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Eclipse Costume Details

Costume designer Tish Monaghan from Twilight Saga:New Moon is the same designer who clothes for the cast of the third movie of Twilight saga, "Eclipse." MTV covers the bits and pieces of fashion of Eclipse costumes from the movie trailer

IS THAT AN ENGAGEMENT RING?

YES! "This is an engagement ring on Bella's finger!" Tish confirmed. "This is something that was made for her by the props department." In other words: she doesn't have a whole lotta info to share on it. So, until we are able to investigate further, we should point out that the ring (at least what we can see of it from our extreme zoom-in) looks like he could be quite similar to the domed oval one authorized by author Stephenie Meyer after the "Eclipse" book came out, which is for sale by Infinite Jewelry Co. Check out a 2009 article from the Salt Lake Tribune for more information on the story behind that ring.

If you're wondering what Kristen and Robert Pattinson are wearing in the above pic, Tish says Kristen is in a cashmere sweater from J Crew and J Brand Jeans. Rob is "probably wearing" a Banana Republic shirt.

Banana Republic shirt.

IS IT JUST US OR IS EDWARD WAY MORE CASUALLY DRESSED THAN HE WAS IN "NEW MOON"?

"Rob only wore the suit in the last film because of a continuity theme," the costume designer explained. "He wore it for Bella's party, and then he never changed. In 'Eclipse,' he is back at school, and dressing generally, more casual and more relaxed."

As seen above from the gray tee shirt (most like from Banana Republic or GAP), the major color palate for Edward and his family, however, has not been changed: "The whole 'cool' color theme is being continued with 'Eclipse' for the Cullen Clan."

HOW ABOUT JACOB? DO HIS SHIRTS FINALLY FIT HIM CORRECTLY?

Back when we interviewed Tish about the threads from "New Moon," she said there was a distinct reason Taylor Lauther always looked to be almost busting out of his shirts with his biceps — “We tailored his t-shirts so they showed off his muscles,” she said at the time.

So now that Jacob "understands his body," his tops (above he's in a GAP shirt and Levi jeans) must be a size up right? Nope! Because "only two weeks has passed in time between 'New Moon' and 'Eclipse'" — when Bella went to Italy it was the middle of May, now it's June — "He wore the same tee shirts," Tish said.

In the photo above, Kristen is wearing Adriano Goldschmied jeans and what Tish believes to be a Billabong hoodie.

HOLY TANK TOP! IS THAT REALLY BELLA SHOWING SOME SKIN?

When Bella ventures to Florida to visit her mom, Renee (Sarah Clarke) and her husband, it was important for the costume designer to be able to designate warm weather. "We really wanted to show that it was a different climate, so that was the reason [we put Kristen is a tank top]," Tish reported. "Script called for bathing suits, but we opted for more of a coverup, for both her and her on screen mom."

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