Carlos Rosario’s Costumes Make ‘Shogun’ More Than Excellent Television

In FX’s Shōgun, Mariko doesn’t walk, she glides. Her eyes can be fire or ice, and when she decides to bare her figurative teeth, she is magnificent. Anna Sawai, the actress who portrays Lady Toda Mariko in FX’s miniseries Shōgun, is more than gifted, and is capable of telling the camera exactly what her character thinks, regardless of what her lines might be. Mariko’s prowess, when wrapped in the meticulous period costumes designed by Carlos Rosario, becomes awe-inspiring.

There is a subtle alchemy to costume design, especially when a production requires historic clothing, and I often think that costume designers don't get enough credit. Telling stories on film requires world building. When we find ourselves immersed, far past suspension of disbelief, it is connected to the way characters are dressed. The actors who wear well-designed costumes have an additional tool to aid their work, which is to imbibe a character, bring them to life and make them real. For Shōgun, the costume department worked with kimono experts, people whom Rosario described to me as “really good at dressing all our female characters with all those layers.” This makes sense. There are a lot of layers of under-robes, the 17th century shifts which were used as undergarments, even the outer garments are layered. This affects movement; how could it not?

When I first binge-watched the early episodes of Shōgun, I had to know how this world was built, how the textiles worked like paint across canvas, how warriors, villagers and nobles became real people on screen. I reached out to the costume designer for the show, Carlos Rosario, and he was gracious enough to talk with me about how he went about creating more than 2,300 costumes for the ten-episode miniseries.

Pilot-Major John Blackthorne, also called Anjin, starts the first episode of the series in garb typical of a European sailor at the beginning of the 17th century, clothing that we all have at least a rough idea of. Slowly, Rosario told me, he “added all these different Japanese pieces to his costumes. That impacted the way he was speaking and he was moving. And he felt restricted with those clothes. I mean, he was used to wearing a very wide blouse and britches and that was it, and then here he is wearing all these layers of clothing. It's a different way of dressing and it's a different way of moving and also that restriction for him, I think really helped him to be in character.”

It helped, Rosario told me, to be working within the confines of a period of transition. The series takes place during the end of the Sengoku era. One English translation of “Sengoku” is a phrase which means something close to “age of battles,” or “warring states,” which makes sense, as it was an incredibly turbulent era of near constant civil war. The exact number of years the period lasted is murky, but it’s generally considered to span 50 years, from the mid fourteenth century to the mid fifteenth. Though it overlaps with other eras, in terms of both stability and aesthetic, the Sengoku era ends with the beginning of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1603. The Edo period, named after the city we today know as Tokyo, arrived with Tokugawa, who instituted a mandate closing Japan’s borders.

James Clavell’s 1975 novel, Shögun, tells the story of that transition. Albeit with fictionalized characters, some historical liberties, and some language that hasn’t aged very well, it is a story based on actual history. In 1980, Shögun became a much-lauded television show for the first time, greenlit after the success of the miniseries Roots, in 1977. NBC achieved the highest Neilson rating records in its history with the show, which starred Richard Chamberlain as Anjin, Yoko Shimada as Mariko, and Toshiro Mifune as Toranaga.

Almost 50 years later, how does a person approach a job which is steeped in period detail and rich with nuance? It starts at the top, Rosario told me. “I think that came from our showrunners, Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo, and I had three interviews to get the job. I mean, the word that kept coming back was authenticity. Accuracy, that was the obsession. And in order to do that, you know, we really need to take care of every single detail, literally everything had to be made, except a couple of pieces that I found that were interesting to us.”

The research, the desire to be immersed in such a specific era extended to Rosario’s office, where all his walls “were covered with boards and droppings and fabrics. I always put lots of tables with everything, all the swatches and the fabrics, I need to be swimming in that world. And it's the same thing for the showrunner and the producers, I think that was very helpful for them to stay connected with the characters. It was such an intense and beautiful project that when Friday night arrives, it's not like you can just turn the switch off. The characters in this story were with us the entire time for six months. You know, it's a labor of love.”

Making all the garments, which include a massive amount of armor and ceremonial dress, necessitated the creation of a system, “so we could control the narrative of the costumes, control the color palette, and take care of all the details. Our show runners really expected us to know everything about this period. That was very clear.” One of the producers was in charge of putting all the research together, and by the end there was a show bible more than 1000 pages long.

Before focusing on details, Rosario said, “you need to have a vision about what you would want the show to look like. And I think that, you know, we had incredible show runners that had a very clear vision, and were guiding me throughout the entire project. But for me, I needed to first start with conceptualizing first, the different categories, the different groups of people that I had to design for. And so it was Osaka and Edo. And then, obviously, you have the armor. And then you have the castle, right, with all the Lords and ladies. And so that was my first instinct to start it in that way. What is the color palette that it would want? What about the streets of Osaka? And what do I want to say with the castle? And so, we started swatching fabrics. And as we found the fabrics, and then I started thinking about the color palette for each category, you could see that slowly these different worlds came through. And once you know that, then you can start with the smaller details. So then you need to, but still staying within a wide range of concepts, meaning what are the ranks? What is the location? What type of clothing is required for that specific scene? Right? And then you go more into details afterwards. Which is more about well, what is the emotional arc that Marika was going through? You know, what are you trying to tell with black foreign, you know, how does black foreign needs to feel next to everybody else, you know, and then that's when you start putting together your sauce for every costume, and specifically for every scene.”

Research is obviously important, but the actual design and construction of so many historical garments was an enormous task from the beginning. There are very few, if any, extant garments from Japan’s Sengoku era. This isn't a geographically exclusive issue; we don’t know of many extant garments more than a few centuries old from anywhere. The oldest clothing we have found, like the fourth millennium BCE Tarkan dress found in a Cairo cemetery in 1913, are singular examples that happened to survive. Ancient apparel today exists mostly in fragments.

This is not a question of quality of production or skill. Textiles made from natural fibers (like silk, cotton, hemp or wool) naturally degrade over time. The first synthetic thermoplastic polymer, nylon, was synthesized in 1935, and the synthetic silk invented in the 1870s was too flammable for commercial use. The clothing we wear today will last much longer than the individuals who wear it. What this means practically, especially for costume designers working on period pieces, is that examples of era-appropriate clothing found in art and writing are the best tools to ensure historic accuracy. Paintings, engravings, drawings, or fiction or journals and other forms of nonfiction, work which explains what people wore and how they wore it; these are what costume designers study to understand the clothing for the era they are recreating. It’s fascinating how Rosario and his team worked it out.

“We had a team in Los Angeles and in New York that were watching for fabrics. And [I had been] sent to Vancouver, it's well known for not having any fabrics. So they sent boxes and boxes and bags of swatches. And there was nothing that really inspired me. I could see maybe a couple of things for underlayers as basics, but there was no character piece there. So, we had a team of two people in Japan, searching for the most beautiful fabrics there right and sending us this incredible wonderful stuff, you know, unique bolts of fabrics. You know, each bolt is about 10 to 12 meters [32-40 feet].”

Rosario told me that what he received from Japan was “extremely expensive, but absolutely unique. And when we got the first box open so we could look at them, we were like, that’s it, that's the show. They were stunning. They captured the essence of the Japanese culture. Also, I felt that it was respectful because it was coming from Japan. I thought that was the way to do it. So I did a big presentation [for the show runners] and they understood that the budgets needed to be in alignment with the cost of those fabrics. I told them that if we wouldn't get those fabrics, I was worried that they wouldn't get the result we wanted. And they've been so supportive throughout the entire show, my success is because of them, because they were so helpful and understanding what I needed to do the best job possible.”

You can see the difference, and feel it, between a production that cuts corners on the artisans and craft which convince audiences to embrace their desire to further suspend the disbelief. We want to buy in, and mistakes stick out, they pull focus. With the budget secured for the textiles, the question of producing a wardrobe for each character was next addressed. Rosario had an excellent team, truly dedicated and talented individuals, one of whom was James Casey Holland, an illustrator and conceptual artist. “He worked with me for pretty much the entire show. That would be like 16 months. Initially, I did work with four other illustrators for about six weeks. To help me help me and James, do all the illustrations for all the different armors. But after that, James was my main person to work with.”

Rosario would send Holland his boards, which are visual representations of his ideas for various costumes, sometimes with swatches of fabric to be digitally rendered. [You can see a lot of these digital illustrations on Rosario’ Instagram Page] Rosario also collected and passed on images, links, really anything that he found useful or thought might be helpful. “Usually,” Rosario said, “I'm very, very specific, specifically on this show. Because we have so many costumes to design, and such a short amount of time that I had to be very clear with what I needed.”

In constant communication, and working on a truncated timetable, Holland produced the illustrations. Together they would tweak them, make edits until they were perfect enough to present to the showrunners. Rosario explained, “for me, it's not only a visual that helps me convince the showrunner about what it would like to design for the character. It's not only about beauty, and it's not only about the mood that I'm trying to convey through the illustration, but it's also a tool to show the workroom you know, so they can see the drawing, and they know what they need to do. And so the part that is very, sort of very, almost practical and functional.”

The producers obviously agreed. Rosario told me that the “lead producer, and our showrunner Justin Marks, had them in their office, throughout the entire show all the illustrations next to each other. So every time they did a Zoom with a team, they always had those illustrations in the back. And it was so beautiful.”

Rosario began his career in fashion, not costume. He received his formal education at Ecole Superieure de la Mode in Paris which is a very prestigious institution. Before transitioning to costume design he worked with Vivienne Westwood and Christian Dior Homme. Chanel selected him, when he was still a student, to interview Karl Lagerfeld at a presentation in his honor at the Sorbonne. Rosario moved from Europe to Los Angeles in 1995 with the specific goal of working in cinema, and was soon hired by famed costume designer Colleen Attwood, who would become his mentor.

All of his early experience fed his work on Shōgun. “I think that's the way I designed my costumes. I designed them from the ground up, meaning these are real characters. And I approached [that way] because my first passion was fashion. Right? I always come from the perspective of fashion. Meaning fashion, not in the sense, the glamorous way. But fashion in the sense that these clothes need to feel real. You know, these are real characters. This is not about making me happy. This is not about creating a great costume. It is about just real clothing. And so it's in a way when you approach it that way. You allow these characters to be approachable to the audience.”

In feudal Japan, even enemies show respect to each other, observing the proper conduct and courtesy even during the most disagreeable of circumstances. Each clan or family of warriors has a specific style of dress, colors, iconography and motifs which differentiate between men on a battlefield. But regardless of which warlord a soldier is aligned with, no matter who he has pledged fealty to, the sharp cut of the shoulders is the same. Like the stringent rules which dictate how various social classes interact with one another, the collars and epaulets adorning their battle dress emote reverence for an ancient solemnity. Death, even the death of a sworn enemy, is not something to be taken lightly by these feudal lords. This respect is made obvious by what these men are wearing, and the armor and kimono are cut, styled, and worn in such a way that they affect the way an individual soldier stands at attention or maneuvers bloody conflict. It does not matter what or who these men are fighting for, underlying everything is a current of veneration. Clan crests, worn on both sides of the torso by the Lords, are often mirrored by the blanket-sized banners so behind the characters at camp, serving as both a barrier allowing privacy and a declaration as to whose army is resting or awaiting further commands.

In a scene early in the series we see an excellent example of battle dress, work Rosario collaborated on with armorer Jack Tung. The scheming Kashigi Yabushige, played by the excellent Tadanobu Asano, meets his superiors and fellow warriors in regalia trimmed with pitch black raven feathers. I asked Rosario about the background on this particular costume, and the armor worn by samurai and other warriors.

“Yabushige, he’s such a complex and multi-layered character, that he needed something special. And I love that piece, mostly because the feathers reminded me of something very organic in touch with nature. And he was the green army. And so we created all this bark, sort of texture textures on the armors. And so there was the concept for him and his army. And I thought that the feathers would give him a lot, a very organic look. And also, I felt that for this period, it was before the Edo period. That is way more fun flamboyance in every single way. There was something that was very much connected to the earth and down nature, right. That's the reason why I went with that piece. And also one thing that I've never said before to any journalist is that in the back, there is a right at night of if you've seen into the back of that Jinbaori, there is a leather piece I think it was maybe deer skin and then we did a writing and in fact, that's writing you'll see it is actually in episode one. There is a back shot of him. And so it is actually the name of a Japanese God [Hachiman]. It's really interesting that we put it there because it's a powerful Lord who would have the name of their Japanese God on their clothing, their armor, their chi Maoris as a way to protect themselves from their enemies.”

“Presence is most keenly felt in absence,” which is an eloquent way of summarizing how I feel about this show. It is a massive achievement, all these moving parts and the sheer number of people required to do all the work. What Rosario has accomplished, it’s not a small thing, and all too often the work of costume designers is lumped in with the rest of production design. It is seen as ancillary, and sure, it can be that. But in the hands of Carlos Rosario, costumes are so much more than support; they become a framing device, a physiological adjustment which helps a performer embody a totally different person.

I asked Rosario how he felt about the project now that it is finished. What it felt like, looking back, to participate in something created on such a grand scale. “I don't think that I ever felt as alive on this project as I've ever felt in my entire life. Like, it became part of who I am. I was triggered, I was alive. I don't think I've ever felt that way. Any circumstances in my life. It was just everything that made me happy. We treated everything as art. Art, that is the word. And I loved everything, even the way my clothes were wrapped to go to set, the way the fabrics were handled, the way the costumes were brought to the lead actress, the way everything was done. I think in a way, the way Japanese people would have loved it in a very ritualistic way, you know, in a respectful way. It feels very sacred, you know, and I love that. I love that.”