Catch Me A Killer

Catch Me a Killer is an 11-part true crime television series set in South Africa, based on cases worked on by forensic psychologist and police investigator Micki Pistorius in the 1990s. It stars British actress Charlotte Hope as Pistorius, who was instrumental in securing convictions for many serial killers in the late 1990s.

The brief was simple - “Recreate History”.

However, recreating history in the world of design is not as simple as one might think. In order to recreate history as a costume designer, requires a very deep dive into the

history of the actual subjects we design for, which includes not only our leads

and the supporting roles, but, on this job, also a proper case study of the victims

of these heinous crimes that were committed during the period of the 1990’s in

our beautiful country.

My co-designer Annie Seegers and I spent a lot of time researching every case

that we were shooting episodes on, to find as much photographic and written

detail about Micki Pistorius, her co-workers including the victims and the

murderers.

I remember there was this silver metal box which contained a lot of the original

police case files and photographs of the victims who were found and the

murderers pointing out where they left their victims – this was diXicult to go

through but necessary in order to do a full history with as much detail as possible

of the clothing items which were present on everyone involved.

There was not very much photographic history on Micki so we focused on what

we could find from historic articles and sat down with Micki in person to discuss

with her what she remembers about those times in her life Ito, what she liked to

wear, what was her go-to items in her closet, did she have a favorite pair of jeans

or a shirt or boots or jacket she preferred when she went to work. How did she

like to wear her shirt, tucked in all the way, French tucked, out... what was her

favorite colors. What was her style when she was oX duty / socializing / going on

a date. What did Micki wear when she worked all through the night at home when

she was so focused on the details of a case and she couldn’t think of anything

else but solving this crime?

My co-designer Annie was a great source of information herself, and it was great

to pick her brain as she was about the same age as Micki Pistorius, demographic,

Afrikaans and from Pretoria, studied at the same university, so they had a lot in

common. Annie lived that period so her knowledge about what was current in

those times was very valuable. We also did our research on the military and SAPS’ various units to determine which uniforms were appropriate for the various years to ensure that we were

spot on with our uniform looks. We had a very knowledgeable police liaison

oXicer, Kurt Oliver, whose father was the head investigator in the Cape murders,

who assisted us in sourcing the current style uniforms for the SAPS characters –

however, the older uniforms was a potential obstacle that we had to solve. We

required the old army browns, old style SAPS uniforms from the apartheid era as

well as the correct insignia.

We were very lucky, both my co-designer and I, to be the owners of Annie’s

Wardrobe, which is one of the biggest wardrobe rental companies to the film

industry in South Africa. Annie’s Wardrobe houses the biggest collection of military and period uniforms,

and we managed to source the majority of all the period uniforms we required

from there. Insignia was not a problem as we had suXicient supply in this that we

have collected over more than a 20-year period and some high-ranking oXicers’

insignia was supplied by Kurt via SAPS. There were a few specific ranks’ insignia

which we needed and could not source, including hospital nurse rank badges –

these we had casted and made from resin. We ended up having everything we

needed to complete all the required looks including the specific insignia and

rank badges needed for military, SAPS and hospital staX.

To make clothing look authentic on screen and to have the appropriate level of

wear-and-tear, we spent a lot of time ageing and doing breakdown on costumes.

Every crew member of our costume department had a full kit of breakdown items

with them for touch-ups and in case someone moved out from background

nearer to camera. The ageing of wardrobe was a big undertaking, but our crew

managed wonderfully as everyone was focused and dedicated, going above and

beyond to ensure our department nailed it all the way.

I am very proud of everyone who was on our team – their hard work and loyalty

and positive spirits contributed greatly to the level of success we managed to

achieve amidst such a tricky job.

There was a lot of sourcing of vintage from both the 1980s, 1970s and even the

1960s. Dressing for the 1990’s in rural and poverty-stricken neighborhoods: You

need to take into account that people of these walks of life did not have the

financial means to buy new clothing or to even have clothing that was from the

1990s. Their clothing items were mostly older, broken-down hand-me-downs

from times gone by. A man who wore a suit might’ve inherited it from his father or

another relative or picked it up second hand from a hospice store – which

meant that most often a very poor person who wore a blazer for e.g. in the 1990s

would be wearing a blazer from a previous decade. Ensuring that items were

authentically vintage and went through the true wear of getting to a broken-down

stage was invaluable to us. This makes things look real – authentic – as it truly

was. It looks even better on screen.

Even for our leads, we purchased a lot of

new costume items as we needed doubles and triples for a lot of them, but these

items would go through different stages of stone washing and ageing to ensure

authenticity and ensuring that multiples needed for the same scenes were aged

appropriately to be identical as far as possible. For Zikode for e.g., the

Donnybrook killer, there was a single image of him in his case file where he wore

a herringbone patterned green and cream crew knit jersey – this we knitted from

scratch then aged it to match it identically. It is such a pleasure to focus on the

specific details of each character and seeing the whole costume design and

production design team working together in-sync. For me, as a costume

designer, it is very crucial to have proper lines of creative communication

between my department and the art department so to ensure that we work on

one cohesive design to make a beautiful piece of art, together.