Kate Forbes started as an insatiable teen from Leicester scouting the world for punks and club kids, or anyone who shared her desire for self-expression in an insipid culture. Now, she works with the costume designers she revered as a child.

At 17, Forbes became an apprentice to costumier Roger Burton — who worked on “Hackers” and “Blind Horizon” — for which she said she was happily “pimped out” for little pay. Now, Forbes flaunts a three-decade career in an industry she describes as “inaccessible” and “thrilling.”

After her most recent project, “The Brutalist,” received Oscars buzz, WSN sat down with Forbes to discuss her role as a costume designer. In telling her journey, it seems Forbes’ career has been nothing short of monumental — much like the film itself.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

WSN: Did something in particular draw you to the script for ‘The Brutalist?’

Forbes: The script itself drew me in 100%. I thought it was an amazing script, and I’ve always loved ‘The Fountainhead,’ the Ayn Rand book, and there seemed to be echoes of that in ‘The Brutalist.’ I had a two-hour conversation with [director] Brady Corbet after reading the script, and everything he was saying really rang so true for me — the amount of years that he already invested in the film was incredible. It was such a labor of love, and when you feel the integrity in the script, in the project and from Corbet, it’s really hard to say no. It was such a glorious opportunity — especially a film set in 1950s America, the fashion to choose from doesn’t get better than that, really.

WSN: What was the process of sourcing the clothes in the film?

Forbes: The film covers a huge time period that is 1947 to 1960. So it was important that you could see that change in time in the film [through] the clothes. Because we needed so much and the budget was so limited, we set about finding all original pieces from the time period. We worked from seven costume houses in the end in the U.K. and [the rest of] Europe. We amassed everything we could for specific characters and for all the general background dressing from each of those houses and pulled it all together in Budapest, where we were filming.

WSN: You brought up how much you enjoyed working with Brady Corbet, but if you could work with any director, living or dead, who would it be?

Forbes: Definitely David Lynch. Before I got into costume design, I would watch ‘Twin Peaks’ on TV when I was younger and was a huge fan. I’m sad that I never got that opportunity to work with him, but he remains my hero.

WSN: Who do you work most closely with when you join a project — the director, actors, producers or some other entity?

Forbes: Never the producers, sorry. Nope. You do get creative producers, but they’re not the people that you have those creative conversations with. Every job is different, and some directors like to be really hands-on with the costume design. In the instance of Corbet with ‘The Brutalist’ and Chloe Domont when I was working on ‘Fair Play,’ both were fairly hands-off. Once they gave me their material and their input with the characters, they stepped back. The dialogue became a lot between me and the production designer and sometimes the director of photography so I could get a good understanding of the lighting and the production design. I also worked closely with the cast and with each actor to develop their character and find a sort of costume world where they felt comfortable and that [delivered] as much for them as it [did] for the film.

WSN: You said that the looks in period films like ‘The Brutalist’ had to be authentic rather than stylized. Why do you feel this way about period pictures versus films you have worked on that are set in the present day, like ‘Fair Play?’

Forbes: In period [films], it’s important that you nail those characters who are shaped by their time. Like with Adrien Brody’s character Lászlo, there’s a real defiant independence with him: he doesn’t conform to the establishment and the Van Buren kind of sea of suits. Then there are people who say to me, ‘Oh, but you must have really planned that scene with the red dress on Emma Laird with the red curtains in the background,’ but it wasn’t planned. We loved the dress on her, and then she’s just in the scene in this space, which I’ve never seen before, but it just sung. But that for me is how life goes; there are those moments that simply happen, and it’s really beautiful. It’s seeing those moments and embracing them and also understanding that you don’t need everything to be planned and stylized.

WSN: After working as a costume designer for about three decades, is there a sort of attitude that you needed to maintain in order to keep at it?

Forbes: I would say that I have quite a punk spirit. I love the individuality of punk. I love how it didn’t cost any money to be a punk; you could wear a customized bin bag and chop off your hair and be a punk. There was always something very accessible. That’s the thing about starting in the film industry, I had no access. There’s a reason why it’s so nepotistic, and it’s because it’s inaccessible. Back then I didn’t even understand that there was the role of the costume designer, so there was that distance. The best thing you can do is find somebody whose work you admire and contact them. Pursue the person like how I pursued Roger when I was 17 and make the tea or whatever it is, you’ve got to start from the bottom. It’s taken me 30 years to get to the place I am now, 30 years of doing a lot of stuff but learning constantly.

Contact Jadah Jules at [email protected].