The stylish killer has long been a staple in crime films, and not just in Hollywood movies like “Collateral” and “Pulp Fiction.” The tradition spans the globe, from England (“Get Carter”) to Hong Kong (John Woo’s “The Killer“) and France (the revisionist noir films of Jean-Pierre Melville and Jean-Luc Godard). Yet for the new Netflix movie “The Killer” (no relation to the Woo film), director David Fincher wanted something different: a killer (Michael Fassbender) whose style was so nonexistent that he could just blend into the background of any city.
“In our initial conversations, David said that he didn’t want Fassbender to look cool, he wanted him to look dorky,” costume designer Cate Adams told IndieWire. “When he’s in Paris, we wanted him to look like a German tourist no one would want to go near.” That idea came from the guiding principle for the killer: Every decision is geared toward the efficient, successful completion of his work. That translated into dressing Fassbender in clothes that looked anonymous and were easy to get on and off. “David called it ‘lazy people clothing.’ Nothing that would take a long time or a lot of thought: zippers, velcro, pullovers…David always mentioned Skechers.”
The idea was also that the killer would find his wardrobe wherever he was traveling or on Amazon, so Adams and her team scoured chain stores for multiples of the most nondescript clothes they could find. “He’s shopping at whatever stores are available to him, whether he’s in an airport or walking down the street in a big city,” Adams said. “He’s just popping into a store and finding something that looks easy to put on and easy to dispose of.” Though Adams had to suppress any natural inclination to give the killer style or character, there were subtle ways in which she was able to create some idiosyncratic touches. The killer’s practice of listening to his iPod when he’s on a job meant he needed a pocket, so even in his “German tourist” clothes, there’s an odd touch underneath. “He’s got this Hawaiian aloha shirt on underneath because it has a pocket for the iPod. That’s kind of a weird little element.”
Even when creating more specific, tailor-made items for Fassbinder, Adams and Fincher went back to basics. One of the standard pieces of the killer’s uniform is a bucket hat; initially, it was custom-made to fit Fincher’s desire to have the killer wear something nylon or water-resistant so that the character wouldn’t need an umbrella. Ultimately, however, Adams landed on a hat her team found in an Army surplus store in Venice, California. “We made some hats, and it just didn’t work,” Adams said. “Then one of my shoppers found this roll-up hat, and we purchased a bunch of them.”
Although Adams worked on Fincher’s “Mindhunter” Netflix series as an assistant costume designer, “The Killer” was her first time as a department head for the director. To prepare she watched not only some of the films that influenced “The Killer,” like Melville’s “Le Samourai” and Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window,” but took another look at Fincher’s earlier work to get a sense of what he liked. In the end, she found that his specificity is what made their collaboration a pleasure, if a challenge. “Working with David, you have to be on top of your game,” Adams said. “You have to be prepared all the time. You’re never going to show him something the day of — things need to be decided weeks before, if possible. And I think that keeps everybody on their toes.”
