Erin Benach Creates Characters

Photo Courtesy Of Erin Benach

It is the morning of Thanksgiving, and Erin Benach is doing phone interviews from her home in Eagle Rock, a film-favoured neighbourhood in Northeast Los Angeles, California. She enjoys living here because it feels like a small, family-friendly community where you can walk almost everywhere.

A Q&A session with Benach usually lasts about half an hour. Beforehand, the journalist has been instructed by her firm but friendly assistant to "please make sure you don’t go too far over 30 minutes." The film "Loving," for which Benach served as costume designer, has recently premiered, and she has several interviews scheduled before the buzz of Thanksgiving dinner begins.

On this festive morning she is in her element, surrounded by family including her firstborn child and her husband, whom she had missed dearly while working months earlier. During production she had spent four months in Richmond, Virginia, nearly 3,000 miles away, filming while pregnant and contemplating how to make Richard Loving’s wardrobe resonate with a 21st-century audience.

Growing up, Benach wanted to become a teacher. Instead, she ended up studying graphic design and photojournalism at the Newhouse School at Syracuse University in New York. She had also developed an intense passion for fashion but never felt she quite fit in with that world. After graduation, Benach worked at Penguin designing book covers. At the same time, she took on freelance assignments and attended night classes at the Fashion Institute of Technology. During her first two weeks of vacation from Penguin, she interned on a film set.

"Capturing the script and what people’s psychology is what is real," Benach says, referring to the philosophy behind her work. Her extensive portfolio is strongly influenced by a documentary sensibility: the past, the present, and a believable future. Films such as "In the Mood for Love," "Children of Men," and "2046" serve as touchstones.

This pursuit of realism helped shape Ryan Gosling’s transformation in "Blue Valentine," where his character evolves from a charming young man into something closer to a dishevelled dreamer opposite Michelle Williams. In another film, the neo-noir Drive, the quiet driver he portrays gradually reveals a far darker side.

In 2015, Benach began work on "Loving" after writer-director Jeff Nichols had been tapped to bring the script to life. Already familiar with the Loving v. Virginia civil rights case, she reached out to Nichols because she wanted to be part of the project. The challenge was to bridge historical accuracy with contemporary sensibilities so that the characters and atmosphere would feel authentic without appearing dated.

The answer, surprisingly, lay below Richard Loving’s belt.

Black-and-white images possess a timeless quality. Clothing in monochrome tends to appear classic and contemporary regardless of the era in which it was originally worn. But in colour, garments can suddenly feel tied to a particular decade. Today, men often wear jeans low on their hips; sixty years ago, they wore them at the waist. To subtly modernise Richard Loving’s silhouette without distorting the historical record, Benach adjusted the trousers slightly in the crotch area — a small alteration that quietly shifted the look.

To carefully recreate Loving’s wardrobe, famously photographed by Grey Villet for "Life" magazine, Benach also consulted a menswear designer. The goal was to approach the craft with precision without straying from the truth. Authenticity, after all, is what drives her work.

"I like to tell stories," Benach says. "I don’t need the distracting orchestra."

A few minutes later, another call was waiting.