Chris Miller
For costume designer Antoinette Messam, The Bluff was never about recreating the familiar iconography audiences have come to expect from pirate films. Rather than lean into plumed hats, polished period silhouettes, or exaggerated swashbuckling aesthetics, Messam approached the film with a clear intention: to create a world that felt lived in, culturally grounded, and emotionally authentic to the people inhabiting it. Set during the waning years of the pirate era on a remote Caribbean Island, The Bluff offered an opportunity to explore a version of history shaped less by fantasy and more by survival, migration, trade, and community.
Drawing from her own Caribbean heritage, extensive archival research, and a deep collaboration with director Frank E. Flowers, Messam built costumes that reflect the layered histories of deserters, settlers, formerly enslaved people, and pirates whose wardrobes were assembled through necessity rather than fashion. Clothing in The Bluff feels accumulated rather than designed—weathered fabrics, repurposed textiles, and practical silhouettes shaped by climate and circumstance. At the same time, costume becomes an essential storytelling device, charting emotional transformation through subtle visual shifts, particularly in the film’s female characters. In the below conversation, Messam discusses the challenge of balancing Victorian influences with Caribbean realities, filming a tropical story in the cold Australian winter, and why the most meaningful details often come from cultural memory and unexpected historical research.
The Bluff is available now on Prime.
Film Obsessive: What first sparked your interest in costume design, and how did you find your way into the film industry?
Antoinette Messam: I began my career styling music videos, commercials, and advertising campaigns in the late ’80s and early ’90s. As much as I enjoyed it, I was looking for a more stable career path. A fellow stylist suggested buying for film and television, and I was lucky enough to land a job with costume designer Delphine White, who became a wonderful mentor.
She later recommended me for my first job as a Costume Designer on MTV’s first drama series, Catwalk, and that opportunity launched my career. The rest is history, though I’m still searching for that perfect work-life balance.
Were there any costume designers, films, or artistic influences that shaped your creative voice early on?
Looking back at some of my early work, I can definitely see the grunge influence. Fashion-wise, I was obsessed with John Galliano, and music was heavily influenced by Nirvana and that whole era. I had just worked with Floria Sigismondi on one of her first music videos at Revolver Films, and I loved the process of deconstructing and aging costumes to make them feel lived in and real.
As for costume designers, Sandy Powell’s work on Velvet Goldmine blew me away, and I loved what Arianne Phillips did on The Crow. I think I was always drawn to things that felt a little darker, more stylized, and a bit rebellious. I was probably more of a Twin Peaks person than a Beverly Hills, 90210 or Fresh Prince of Bel-Air person. Looking back, all of those influences helped shape my creative voice in ways I probably didn’t even realize at the time.
You have mentioned before that you wanted to avoid familiar pirate imagery and silhouettes audiences have seen before for The Bluff. What were some of the visual clichés you consciously tried to move away from, and how did you challenge yourself to reinvent that language?
The first thing I wanted to avoid was the classic pirate imagery we’ve all seen before, especially plumed tricorn hats and the cinched knee breeches that immediately signal “pirate movie.” Since The Bluff takes place at the tail end of the pirate era, it wasn’t too much of a stretch to move away from some of those stereotypes.
The bigger challenge was finding the balance between staying true to a Victorian silhouette and acknowledging that this story takes place on a small Caribbean island. Cayman Brac didn’t have the same class structure or access to fashion that you would have found in larger cities or colonies, so I allowed myself some leniency. The women weren’t wearing corsets and layers of petticoats, and the men were less formal, often wearing a mix of pieces they might have acquired through travel, trade, or necessity.
For me, the key was loosening some of the traditional rules and streamlining the costumes. I wanted the characters to feel authentic to their environment and circumstances rather than look like they had stepped out of a pirate costume catalogue.
How did you use costume design to communicate the character’s emotional journey or internal transformation on The Bluff?
I think the women in The Bluff show their journeys through costume more than the men. Elizabeth, in particular, undergoes a significant transformation. She starts out as a proper young woman, wearing dresses that reflect both the period and her aspirations, clothes that may have been made by her or brought home by her brother from his travels.
As the story progresses, her costumes quite literally break down alongside her journey. The further she gets from the safety of home, the more practical her clothing becomes. Dresses are ripped and altered for mobility, layers are lost, and by the end of the film she is wearing Bloody Mary’s captain’s jacket. That simple costume choice says so much. The young girl who dreamed of adventure has become someone capable of facing danger head-on.
By the time she raises that gun at the end of the film, she looks formidable. Her costume helps tell the story of her growth, courage, and the person she is becoming.
Did the shooting locations or climate influence your design choices in unexpected ways?
Absolutely. The Bluff is set on a hot, sultry Caribbean island during the Victorian era, so the costumes needed to feel authentic to that environment. The challenge was that we filmed in Australia during the winter, which created a constant balancing act between period accuracy and keeping the cast warm.
I had to get creative with how we dressed everyone. While the audience sees lightweight clothing appropriate for the Caribbean, many of the actors were wearing hidden layers underneath. We used long underwear beneath period garments, sewed fleece panels into the backs of shirts, jackets, and vests, and even built discreet pockets for hand warmers.
Visually, I relied on open necklines, rolled sleeves, and strategic glimpses of skin to maintain the illusion of heat and humidity, even when the actors were freezing. Every costume decision had to work on two levels: what the audience saw on screen and what the actor needed to get through a long day of filming in the cold.
It was definitely an exercise in problem-solving, but it also made the design process more thoughtful and intentional. Sometimes those limitations force you to become even more creative.
Were there particular cultural references, textiles, or styling details that felt especially meaningful to include for authenticity?
Authenticity was very important to me, but I was less interested in recreating fashion and more interested in reflecting how people actually lived. The story is set in the mid-1800s and centers on deserters, formerly enslaved people, pirates, and settler-farmers, people who wouldn’t have had access to the latest fashions from Europe.
I approached the costumes as an accumulation of lived experience. These were people whose clothing had been acquired, traded, repaired, and repurposed over time. I incorporated details such as African beads, Japanese indigo fabrics, and scraps of cloth that were transformed into pirate scarves and head wraps. I wanted the costumes to feel collected rather than designed, creating a world that felt organic, eclectic, and rooted in the characters’ histories.
I was also fortunate to begin the creative conversation early with our director, Frank E. Flowers. As a Caymanian filmmaker, he shared cultural references that were important to him, including traditional Caymanian wompers footwear and the straw hats that are still worn on the island today. Those details helped ground the costumes in the local culture and history, while still allowing us to create a heightened cinematic world. For me, those touches were some of the most meaningful because they connected the film to a real place and a real community.
How closely did you collaborate with The Bluff departments like production design, hair and makeup, and cinematography to ensure a cohesive visual world?
The collaboration on The Bluff was one of my favorite parts of the process. For the first time in a very long while, I was able to prep a film while sharing the same physical space as my director and fellow department heads. My director’s office was just down the hall, which meant ideas, references, and feedback could be exchanged almost instantly.
What made the biggest difference was being surrounded by the art department. Having production design, props, set decoration, and costumes all working side by side made collaboration effortless. A quick conversation in the hallway could turn into a creative breakthrough that helped shape the palette, tone, or visual language of the film.
We were all in the same creative kitchen, building the world together, and that kind of collaboration is where the magic happens.
Did you learn anything in particular from your time on The Bluff?
One of the biggest things I learned on The Bluff was the value of going back to original source material whenever possible. I was incredibly fortunate to discover that much of the research Frankie, Henry, and I were referencing was housed at the Art Gallery of Ontario—and even more fortunate that I knew the curator.
Being able to view original photographs from the Caribbean Photo Archive was invaluable. Some dated back as far as the 1830s. While there were no direct references to the Cayman Islands, there was a wealth of material from Jamaica and the broader Caribbean that provided real insight into how people lived and dressed during that period.
It reinforced for me that the best research often comes from unexpected places. Those images became a major source of inspiration, not just for costumes but for all of our creative departments, and helped us build a world that felt authentic and lived in.
Is there anything else you would like audiences to know about your work on The Bluff?
The Bluff was a deeply special project for me because I immediately recognized the story from my childhood in Jamaica. It echoed the folklore I grew up hearing, and the opportunity to bring that world to life felt incredibly meaningful. From the start, director Frank E. Flowers and I connected over our shared Caribbean heritage; he was born and raised in the Cayman Islands, and I in Jamaica. The written words felt familiar and instinctive, transporting me back in time to home. That sense of cultural memory and shared understanding made the creative process especially powerful.
