From Roman gladiators to Freddie Mercury to Doctor Who, Robert Allsopp has had a far-reaching and wildly imaginative career creating costume pieces and props for major film and television projects. Allsopp is in town for an appearance at the WHOlanta Convention.
His career began in theater design in the mid-1980s in London, working at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, creating props and costumes primarily for opera and ballet. But he quickly crossed over to film and television, working on the program “Doctor Who.”
Allsopp has since created pieces for films like “Gladiator,” “Elizabeth,” and “Notting Hill.” He made the helmet worn by Sir Ian McKellan as Magneto in “X-Men.” And recently he was called on by the filmmakers of “Bohemian Rhapsody” to recreate some costuming, including the iconic studded belt and armband worn by actor Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury. Though he had never met Mercury, Allsopp has a unique connection to the singer.
“My costume tutor was a lady called Natasha Korniloff,” he tells “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes, “she actually made a lot of Freddie’s stage clothes, and a lot of David Bowie’s stage clothes—in fact she was David Bowie’s girlfriend at one point. So part of the joy of working on ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ was getting to recreate some of the looks that Natasha had made for Freddie himself.”
“Luckily, being trained by Natasha, I knew a lot of her techniques and her ways of working. So for certain things like the iconic harlequin leotard, we could have easily recreated that with a digital print. But I didn’t want to do that because I knew that wasn’t how the original was done, so we did it by piecing together lots of different panels of fabric. To be as authentic as possible.”
