John Malkovich at Drinkwater's: Boston Globe

The Cambridge-based actor wants everyone to remember his lines

By Christopher Muther, Globe Staff  |  April 27, 2006

John Malkovich unfastens the metallic organza bow that binds the handles of a silver bag and begins emptying sketch board after sketch board onto a wobbly cafe table, looking like a rakish English professor in khakis, Keds, and a pristine white waffle-knit sweater.  He’s decided that the easiest way to explain his level of involvement in his men’s clothing line, Uncle Kimono, is to walk through the process of designing clothes — from their inception on his sketch pad to the shopping trips for the buttons that fasten $2,000 suits. Half an hour later, any suspicion that he has signed over his name for marketing purposes has evaporated.

”I’m not a hypothetical person,” Malkovich explains in his carefully punctuated, methodical cadence at a Harvard Square coffee shop. ”I don’t have time to do hypothetical things. I only do real things.”

The 52-year-old actor and director, who lives in Cambridge when he is not traveling for work, is best known for movies such as ”Dangerous Liaisons” and ”Being John Malkovich.” A new one, ”Color Me Kubrick,” is forthcoming. He’s been nominated for an Oscar in the best supporting actor category twice. But when he’s not busy with that career, Malkovich says, he spends ”hundreds of hours” designing clothes.

The line, which consists of T-shirts, sweaters, dress shirts, pants, suits, and ties (they can be seen and purchased at www.johnmalkovich.org), has a strong retro flavor and evokes a feeling, company literature says, of ”late 1950’s Californian beach boys, some Palm Springs Rat Pack, a touch of Lounge Lizards and a recollection of a Swiss banker who’s been let go.”

”Everything in fashion is a reference to something,” he says. ”So, certainly, it’s more modern in that sense than futuristic. I’m not trying to predict, ‘Oh, now we’ll have blue jeans with little ants on them, and you’ll be able to feed the ants.’ That may very well be the case. They make pants or shirts out of steel. They make them with bamboo.”

Sitting and talking with Malkovich is very much like entering a private movie for which he’s written a script in his head before playing the role of himself. His sentences are dotted with elongated pauses, lengthy enough to make you wonder if he’s ready to progress to the next topic or is simply formulating a perfectly structured phrase (it’s usually the latter).

”I’m probably assumed to be difficult,” he says, gazing out the window. ”But I’m really not at all.”

His perfectionism is evident in his approach to Uncle Kimono, which he started in 2002 with partner Francesco Rulli. The process starts when he draws detailed sketches, complete with touches such as red stitching on a suit jacket, or a crocheted shirt collar.

He sorts through hundreds of fabrics and decides on options, and then starts producing elaborate sample boards that include his sketches, swatches, and technical details about the fabrics. Prototypes are made, Malkovich signs off on them, and the clothes find their way into upscale stores. Rulli says the line compares in quality to Etro or Paul Smith.

What seems to frustrate Malkovich — especially on this particular afternoon — is that the production process can’t always accommodate the natty twists of his imagination. The elaborate red stitching on the suit jacket is too complicated to execute (”Apparently like reinventing the wheel, or a lunar landing”), and attaching the crocheted collar to a shirt proves too difficult as well (”Very, very complicated. Perhaps I’ll study that at MIT, since I’m in the neighborhood”).

”It’s actually worse than the movies,” he says of designing clothes. ”A rather extraordinary statement.”

It’s hard to fathom that other celebrity designers, such as Jennifer Lopez and Mandy Moore, pour themselves into their work so dramatically. Yet unlike Lopez, who made a splash with the Versace dress she wore at the Grammys in 2000, or Moore, who is idolized by lip gloss-consuming tweens, Malkovich isn’t widely revered for his fashion acumen. While some celebrity designers produce clothes to help the masses copy their look, Malkovich is clear that his motivation for designing clothes is not to create a world filled with more Malkoviches. He confesses that he barely owns any of his line, so people who purchase the Uncle Ho cashmere shirt or the Endell Street suit are buying strictly for design, not to emulate him.

But he says he has always had an interest in clothes. In college he studied costume design, and more recently he’s worked with theater and movie costumers on projects he has directed.

”I think he has a very good eye for detail,” says Gary Drinkwater, owner of Drinkwater’s, a Cambridge store that will begin carrying Uncle Kimono this fall. ”His pieces are a little more unique. He’s trying to make a statement with what he’s doing. It’s not an ordinary approach.”

Although many of the clothes have a midcentury sensibility, Malkovich’s design influences are not easily categorized. The travel collection that he is now putting together for fall 2006 includes a jacket that he describes as influenced by a Scottish gamekeeper’s coat from the 19th century. Another coat was inspired by a piece he saw at a museum in Leningrad.

Another collection ”is based on [Gustav] Klimt,” says Malkovich, who stars as the Austrian artist in a film that will be released later this year. ”It might just be words from the movie. It might be titles from his drawings. It’s a notion. They’re notionally related in my mind, probably not in anyone else’s. Hopefully not. How unfortunate for them.”

Sometimes his inspirations surface in clothing names. The Free Martha is a boiled-wool coat perfect for observing the Martha Stewart trial, while Tito’s Parrot is a jacket inspired by a multilingual bird that belonged to the Yugoslavian dictator.

Malkovich seems unsure if attaching his own name to the line has helped sales — in fact, he thinks the clothes would probably be more successful if his name weren’t in the forefront. But this comes from a man who speaks of experiencing Blanche DuBois-style drama-queen angst over his frustrations with the fashion world, so despite his consistently placid demeanor, he is prone to hyperbole.

And though he is enchanting and funny in a glass-is-half-empty manner, that perspective sometimes makes answers difficult to obtain. Asking him what he finds creatively fulfilling about designing clothes leads to a series of sardonic statements.

”I don’t know if it fulfills anything,” he says. ”It mostly frustrates at the moment.”

Another attempt prompts:

”It doesn’t matter if it’s hard. It doesn’t matter if you’re the only one who wants it that way and everyone else thinks you’re retarded. That’s how life is. No one is interested in what you’re doing. Assume that, and you’re OK.”

But in Malkovich’s universe, it appears that even a frustrating enterprise has a lining as silver as the organza ribbon that ties his bag

”So why do I like it? I like it because I like details. I like it because I like fabric. I like it because it’s dreamy.”

http://www.boston.com/yourlife/fashion/articles/2006/04/27/wearing_john_malkovich/?page=1