Sharen Davis built a costume design that combines period silhouettes with a deliberately cinematic expressiveness. Each character uses clothing differently in order to take their place in the story.
Designing an era with the freedom of the Western
Sharen Davis approached Django Unchained as a period film shaped by the imagery of the Western. Her interviews explain a double priority: preserving recognisable silhouettes while allowing the characters to have a stylised presence. Fidelity was not treated as a uniform reproduction of every garment from 1858. The costume design also had to respond to the tone, the actors and the references Tarantino brought to the project.
The work begins with specific dramatic questions. Who can choose their clothes? Who must represent a position they do not yet hold? Which character has the means to change their appearance, and who bears the marks of imposition on their body? In this story, dressing is part of freedom, property and social appearance. A difference in cut or colour can convey those relationships before anyone spells them out.
Davis worked with a director who provided precise visual references. Her explanation of the alterations made to adapt the Jamie Foxx jacket inspired by Little Joe, from Bonanza, shows that a reference cannot be transferred mechanically. Proportions and materials have to be found that work on another body and in another film. The result retains a recognisable memory while acquiring a presence of its own on camera.
The full evolution of the protagonist’s garments is set out in the Django costume guide. What matters here is the method that makes it possible to distinguish the entire cast. The ensemble must sustain contrasts between characters without turning them into isolated figures from visually incompatible worlds. The individual choices work because they share a logic of colour, texture and degree of stylisation.
Schultz, Candie and Broomhilda: three relationships to appearance
Schultz presents a mobile, professional elegance. His clothes accompany someone who travels, talks and turns composure into a working tool. His careful appearance allows him to enter spaces where he needs to be listened to. At the same time, his figure retains an eccentricity that sets him apart from the local landowners. He can seem acceptable at first glance without being entirely mistaken for one of them.
The designer explained that the Inverness-style coat, despite its heavy appearance, was made of cotton. That detail reminds us that cinematic costume has to create an impression and allow the actor to work. A garment’s apparent weight does not necessarily reveal its actual weight. Movement, temperature and the length of the shooting day all play a part in decisions that the viewer perceives only as the character’s naturalness.
Calvin Candie uses appearance from a different position. His clothes are part of a staging of wealth and authority. He can present himself as a refined host while imposing violent conditions on those who depend on him. Elegance does not soften his acts; it makes the coexistence of manners and cruelty more visible. The costume sustains that contradiction by keeping the surface attractive even when we know what it conceals.
In Broomhilda’s case, strong colours help maintain a distinct visual presence within a story that often shows her under the control of others. Yellows, blues and purples separate her figure from the surroundings and from memories of violence. This chromatic emphasis should not be confused with material freedom: a person can wear a beautiful garment and remain subject to control. It is precisely the distance between appearance and situation that makes her image so expressive.
A garment also has to stand up to action
Costume in a dialogue scene can end up inside an action sequence. In Django, moments of violence radically alter the condition of the garments. Continuity requires stains, tears and dirt to match the moment in the story, even if the shots are filmed out of order. Clothing therefore participates in the physical memory of what has happened and helps connect separately filmed fragments.
Hidden mechanisms and planned movements also shape the cut. Davis spoke about the need to adapt sleeves for the device Schultz carries. The example shows collaboration between departments: the garment must keep its silhouette, allow the action and avoid drawing attention to the trick before the intended moment. A successful solution goes unnoticed until the scene uses what was hidden.
Cinematography completes the transformation of the design. A fabric that looks intense on a worktable may respond differently under warm lighting or beside a coloured wall. Davis’s decisions have to coexist with the set and the camera work. The visual identity emerges from those relationships, not from a fixed property that each costume would retain in any circumstance.
The costume lets us read the characters as their positions change. Django discovers the possibility of choice; Schultz turns composure into a resource; Candie displays inherited authority; Broomhilda maintains a presence that captivity tries to reduce. Davis’s contribution is to give visible form to those differences and to make each garment keep working when conversation, deception or violence change the scene.
Back to the Django Unchained guide.