Following the runaway success of Ridley Scott’s Gladiator in 2000 ($465 million in business at the box office and five Academy Awards, including best picture), the director fantasized for years about making a sequel. Finally released this Friday, Gladiator II stars Paul Mescal as Lucius, the now grown son of Russell Crowe’s Maximus, who is forced to fight in the Coliseum years after witnessing his father’s death. The sequel delivers blockbuster-worthy action set pieces and sprawling sets. But also noteworthy are the costumes, from frequent Scott collaborators Janty Yates and David Crossman, who drew on 19th-century painters and the brutality and opulence of ancient Rome for their elaborate designs.
“It was a huge, epic to-do—I mean, literally an epic,” Yates, who won an Oscar for her work on the first Gladiator, tells Vogue. “It was an enormous task.”
Crossman, a specialist in military costumes who recently worked with Yates on Scott’s Napoleon, agrees: “There’s not much fun in producing mass armor,” he says. His team pre-fit hundreds of extras for the multilocation shoot. “We had to do hundreds and hundreds of sets, and it all had to be in Morocco by certain times,” he continues. “We were making it all over the world—in New Zealand, Budapest, England—and a lot of it was just arriving the day before we shot. I don’t think I’ve had any other job where I’ve had so many people on planes with 10 to 12 suitcases.”
Crossman also oversaw the battle gear for both Lucius and Pedro Pascal’s General Acacius, which proved more complicated than expected. After saying early on that he wasn’t interested in transforming his body for the film, Mescal later changed course, bulking up ahead of the shoot.
This meant that Crossman and his team had to adapt certain costumes already in the works—including a pale, handwoven leather cuirass molded to Mescal’s torso—to fit his evolving physique. “Normally, you don’t see anybody until a few days before you shoot or their availability is always limited,” Crossman says. “The lucky thing was Paul was on stage in the West End while we were starting on Gladiator at this base in West London, so he was able to come and see us a few times. We just kept going as his body changed shape, so we were able to keep up. And I think he toned to a nice level. It wasn’t too much, and it was enough, wasn’t it?”