Lindy Hemming on dressing The Good Italian

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I was given a lot of free reign in creating the costumes for this third outing for The Good Italian. At Caruso, I worked with their wonderful design team to choose the fabrics and pick the styles. We then had fittings where the clothes were tried on everybody also making sure things looked like they were worn, rather than pieces of fashion, so they had a bit of a patina. It was just like working on a normal film except smaller scale, and I was happy to pop in and see them and look through the different fabrics and styles.

The feel I was aiming to evoke is what I call a "remembered past" ­– not aggressively modern, not too historic, but a fond memory of how things were. It's almost a little bit of a caricature. People watching a film can understand stereotypes and if you can find modern ways of representing these then people can relate to them. In The Good Italian, the hero's hat and his linen jacket are a version of clothing that could be from another time or place. As long as you break it down and make it look worn and as though it fits the person, then it works.

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I think if you're telling a story, which you are, then it's really important for the actors to have real characters, and that you're not doing it just to show the clothes. That's why these little films work so well, because it's not improbable, he [the actor Giancarlo Giannini] really could be the prince of Soragna. When he walks down the street in his glowing white cardigan, I just love how they lit it so he had this glowing white aura.

LINDY HEMMING is an Oscar-winning costume designer who has worked on such films as The Dark Knight, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and multiple James Bond titles. She recently designed the costumes for The Good Italian III – The Magic of Naples, a short film created by Italian menswear brand Caruso; thegooditalian.it