Designing Hamnet: Using Grief, Intuition & Community to Create - Malgosia Turzanska

About this episode

Costume designer Małgosia Turzańska discusses the emotional and artistic processes behind designing costumes for the film Hamnet, highlighting themes of grief and collaboration.

Costume designer Małgosia Turzańska reveals the emotional secrets, symbolic textures, and behind-the-scenes artistry that shaped Hamnet —and how grief, intuition, and collaboration transformed the film from the inside out. In this deeply human conversation, Hamnet costume designer Małgosia Turzańska opens up about creativity, vulnerability, and the profound emotional undercurrents that guided her work. She shares how a missed chemistry test led her to filmmaking, how one breathtaking Almodóvar film unlocked her understanding of costume design, and how she builds characters from raw instinct—starting with "emotional lookbooks" drawn from nature, texture, and intuition rather than pure historical rigor. Małgosia discusses designing Agnes (Anne) and Will from the inside out , using bark cloth , color symbolism , quilted protection , and slashed leather to reflect trauma, longing, generational wounds, and rebirth. She details working with director Chloé Zhao , describing a process fueled by continuous discovery, voice-memo inspirations, and a film family centered on empathy and emotional truth. The conversation grows especially moving as Małgosia describes losing her father during…

People in this episode

Host: Catherine Baumgardner

Guest: Małgosia Turzańska

Topics covered

• costume design
• grief
• intuition
• collaboration
• film

Keywords

• Hamnet
• Chloé Zhao
• emotional lookbooks
• bark cloth
• color symbolism

Mentioned in this episode

Products: bark cloth, slashed leather

Books & works: Hamnet, The "Voice of Costume

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