Photo: Geoffrey Short/Netflix Save Story Save this story Save Story Save this story We’re in the midst of a period-drama-packed fall. Before Sense and Sensibility heads to theaters and Pride and Prejudice hits Netflix, another lush literary adaptation is set to dominate the streamer: a new take on John Steinbeck’s magnum opus, the sweeping East of Eden .
Created by Zoe Kazan—who just so happens to be the granddaughter of Hollywood legend Elia Kazan, director of the 1955 big-screen version of this story, starring James Dean—the miniseries takes a new focus: Cathy Ames, the tale’s irresistible, larger-than-life anti-heroine, played by Florence Pugh. After beginning to understand, as a little girl, the overwhelming desire that men have for her, she eventually learns to use it for her own gains. She becomes entangled with a powerful man who casts her aside, winds up at the door of Adam Trask (Christopher Abbott), and marries him, moving from the East Coast to California. But Cathy is dissatisfied with her long days as a wife and mother to twin boys, Aron and Cal. So she flees, leaving the family’s Chinese-American housekeeper, Lee (Hoon Lee), to care for them, and enters a brothel run by the formidable Faye (Martha Plimpton). There, she builds a new life, renaming herself Kate.
Responsible for crafting Cathy-turned-Kate’s knockout, late-19th- and early-20th-century wardrobe was Kirsty Cameron, the New Zealander also behind the intricate costumes in Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog , another tale of love and loss in the American wilderness. With East of Eden now streaming on Netflix, Cameron talks us through our leading lady’s turbulent, fashion-filled arc—and her own most surprising sources of inspiration.
Florence Pugh as Cathy and Christopher Abbott as Adam Trask in East of Eden .
Vogue : What references were on your mood board for creating Cathy’s look?
Kirsty Cameron: I looked at a lot of photographers, especially those who were taking candid snapshots of real life more than 100 years ago. Two stood out: Edward Linley Sambourne and George Hendrik Breitner. They both photographed women on the streets in this very cool way. It reminds you that these people were modern in their own time, which is important to think about when doing period work.
A woman in late 19th-century Amsterdam, photographed by George Hendrik Breitner.
There’s also Alice Austen, David Hamilton, Deborah Turbeville, and Arnold Genthe’s photos of [San Francisco’s] Chinatown [which provided inspiration for Lee’s look].
“The Shoe Maker, Chinatown, San Francisco” by Arnold Genthe.
We also had a huge list of painters, going from [Mary] Cassatt and [Pierre] Bonnard to [Berthe] Morisot, [Henri de Toulouse] Lautrec, and [Edvard] Munch. Because the photography is black and white, the paintings brought a real sense of the colors of the period.
Mary Cassatt, Young Mother Sewing , 1900.
Edvard Munch, Girls on the Bridge , 1901.
Can you talk me through Cathy’s long arc in terms of her clothes?
Her character goes through so many changes. When she’s a child, she’s being dressed by her mother and being brought up to be a wife, which she never intends to be. She plays along with it, so there’s already an artifice in what she’s wearing.
When we see her at her youngest, she’s reading Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland , but she also seems to be dressed like Alice?
Yes, we were totally jamming off Alice in wonderland [for that look]. I looked a lot at Lewis Carroll’s photog…