You have to imme­di­ately like a cos­tume designer who’ll admit that she’s wear­ing sweat­pants while chat­ting with you from her Van­cou­ver home. We phoned Tish Mon­aghan, who took over styling duties for The Twi­light Saga: New Moon and Eclipse, to talk about how Edward ended up in a suit, why Jacob’s mus­cles are bulging through his shirt (when he actu­ally wears one), what depart­ment man­dated that the wolf pack’s jean shorts be extra tight, and more.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Any­one who’s lis­tened to the Twi­light DVD com­men­tary knows that Robert Pat­tin­son wasn’t a fan of Edward’s pea coat. TISH MONAGHAN: He wasn’t a fan of the pea coat. He wore it in vir­tu­ally every scene, and I think maybe he just got tired of it. I’m guess­ing. [Laughs] He just wanted a more mature look. That was part of Edward’s Grade 11 year, and now he’s get­ting into his grad­u­a­tion year, he’s in a rela­tion­ship. He had worn hood­ies and jeans and sneak­ers, and Robert, the direc­tor [Chris Weitz], and I all wanted to por­tray him more as a gen­tle­man, more ele­gant and clas­sic. With our vam­pire char­ac­ters, I always went back to the time period in which they were turned to see if there’s any ele­ment I could try to sim­u­late in con­tem­po­rary cloth­ing. He came out of the Edwar­dian period, around 1910. Of course, most of the gen­tle­man from that time would be wear­ing suits, coats, hats, etc. We had to pick some­thing that was iconic for the char­ac­ter that would suf­fice to be used through­out the whole film. At the very begin­ning of the film, he has one school out­fit, and then there’s Bella’s birth­day party and dis­as­ter strikes. So Edward ends up in that same cos­tume for the remain­der of the film. I was think­ing of just putting him in a dress shirt and a pair of pants, but Robert wanted to be in a suit.

So I found a mod­ern con­tem­po­rary look that would be appeal­ing to him and to the mas­sive fan base, a very slim cut, and a fab­ric that to me was a bit Old World — this beau­ti­ful tweed fab­ric that we got out of Eng­land. It had the gray base, which is kind of essen­tial for the Cullen char­ac­ters in their cool tones, but also had lit­tle inter­est­ing flecks of blue, which is also Cullen, and a tiny lit­tle bit of rust, which I liked because Bella wears earth tones and that kinda linked her into the pic­ture. The gen­eral tex­ture of the suit would hold up well no mat­ter what set­ting he was in: Inside the house for the party, or in the for­est, or in the Vol­turi cham­ber. We had to show wear on the suit, and it’s much eas­ier to rough up some­thing that has tex­ture to it than just a flat piece of wool. His pants are worn at the knees, they’re rumpled.
I don’t know if anyone’s look­ing at his pants when he removes his shirt in Italy. The fans were very excited to see that, I don’t know if Robert was par­tic­u­larly excited to per­form that in front of 1,500 peo­ple. I think it was quite hard for him to do. We orig­i­nally tested Edward in a plain white shirt, as a forlorn-looking option. That is also what Robert wanted — he wanted some­thing that would wash him out. But you need to have a color that makes you pop, and so we actu­ally dyed the fab­ric this beau­ti­ful ink blue our­selves. It high­lighted his vam­pire white skin really well. I think it’s a great moment when we see him in these clothes that he’s worn from Sep­tem­ber to May. When he goes to sac­ri­fice him­self, he’s in dis­re­pair. Robert and Chris wanted his shirt to have a rip across the chest, so that’s what we gave him. It’s really kind of tragic to watch him take off his shirt, because he really is sac­ri­fic­ing him­self. It looks like he’s just giv­ing up. He’s expos­ing him­self and he’s com­pletely vul­ner­a­ble, and he just takes his shirt off and he drops it at his feet with his eyes down­cast. Then he gets attacked by Bella, who shoves him inside the doors. [Laughs] I don’t find it like a beef­cake moment. It really is a mov­ing moment, and I think Robert did a really amaz­ing job for that scene.
The tear across the chest was to sym­bol­ize that his heart was torn out when he thought he lost Bella?Maybe. [Laughs] They just said, “Rip it across the chest.” I said, “Are you sure? No shirt’s gonna rip like this.” And they said, “Yes.” So I did it.
Why couldn’t he remain shirt­less for the indoor fight scene? Why put on the robe?Orig­i­nally, the guards who grab him were sup­posed to be com­ing from the out­side — that’s why they give him the robe. But the set­ting was changed, and they grab him on the inside. So why do they hand him this robe? Because, quite hon­estly, it looks very cool fight­ing with this long, flow­ing gar­ment, and it does hide pads, pro­tect him.