There wasn't that kind of clarity from a musical position on Queer. He threw out lots of different things that were kind of riddles to solve, but, eventually, what we decided on was leaning into Burroughs and the idea of the cut-up technique and using samplers. It felt like an organic way to tell the story musically.

Reznor: I just found some notes from a call with Luca. So I'll read [them to] you. Here was our directions: "Love could feel like dread—Stockhausen. Lee towards lover—engulfing, overwhelming, an uncompromising approach. He's a broken, lonely man—unknown reciprocation, unsure throughout, but still beautiful. I like the scale of an orchestra—bipolar. Make the score bipolar. Burroughs was like this, from Old America, but contemporary—the score should be like that. Maybe electronic element—Ayahuasca." Okay—go write a score.

the original cut was significantly longer, at least an hour longer than what's in theaters now. And a lot of what was taken out was a more surreal element that was exciting and alters the way the film feels quite a bit. When a lot of that got removed, it was hard for us to understand what the film became, because it shifted the tone of it quite a bit in certain ways.

It became disorienting at times to also quantify the impact the whole film has. You know what I mean? We're watching three-minute chunks, a week of this three-minute and then a week of that seven-minute segment, assuming it sits atop the scaffolding that got us there and leads to what's happening.

sometimes, when you start taking those pieces out, it becomes harder to understand. What you're working on is now affected because it doesn't have that stuff you know is there because you watched it, but it's not there. That's the part of filmmaking that I find tricky. We've experienced it with [David] Fincher as well on some things. To be able, as a director, to remain objective with that many moving parts, that's what feels... When people have said, “Do you ever think about directing?”—it's like, I've thought about how I know I couldn't do it. I thought about, “Well, I'd like to do it,” but it's like, the ability to be able to remain objective about so many things, that feels daunting to me. And as composers we feel like we're able to microscope in to get really close up on things.

Now that I have more of an understanding of filmmaking and an understanding of costume within film, it’s helped me build a team around it—and I would like to continue doing it, because for me, it’s a great escape from my job. It helps me balance out a bit, and being creative without the commerce element feels like a very different exercise—it’s about characterization, and there’s no preciousness around it representing just one vision.

That’s what I love about very good cinema: Those textures you find in the 1950s or ’60s with the clothing—it’s never just a flat surface. You have Lee, played by Daniel, at the beginning wearing this shirt that’s optic white…. [There’s] this idea of it being pristine, like cocaine. By the end of it, after his heroin trip and everything else getting darker and darker, it becomes dirtier…. I like following those threads. With costume, you can do things like that which are more subtle, whereas sometimes with fashion, it has to be loud for people to grab on. In film, you have to lure the audience in and let them know who the character is in a way that unfolds. It’s not about the bang of fashion where it’s a 15-minute show that has to sell you this one idea.

What I find amazing about these pieces is that, as you said, they could be plucked out of a store today, and I did quite like having those things in the film—because sometimes we feel like we’re inventing everything now, but then you realize there were people in the past who were even further ahead than we are.

As the creative director of a fashion house—or two fashion houses—you’re always the decision-maker and the person everyone is turning to to weigh in on everything and have the final say. Working as the costume designer, did it feel pleasant to relinquish that total control for a little while? Yes, I enjoy it. It’s quite nice sometimes to be submissive in life. [Laughs.] I quite like not being in that driving seat all the time, because it makes you think differently when you’re back in the driving seat. I think it’s really helped me with my journey within fashion. It’s nice to restart—it keeps your feet on the ground. I think, in fashion, it’s very easy to levitate off the ground. It helped me to rechallenge myself, and to have those moments in Rome where I really felt like a student again, saying, “I don’t know how this works—but how do I make it work?”

I think with Loewe, for example, it might have affected the way I really reduced the menswear down in the recent show. It became a form of textural classicism—very precise. And I think Allerton may have inspired this idea of building a perfection that is almost like an armor, but then ultimately, you see that there are holes in it—in the trouser, in the sweater. It all looks very together at first, but then you realize it’s not.

I think it’s really important for me to keep doing my day job, because it sharpens my knife outside of it. And I think they can dovetail into one another.

We were actually introduced by Karla Otto. It was one of those meetings where I felt like I had known Luca all my life. We were meant to just have a coffee, but then we chatted all afternoon. I just feel like we are searching for the same things but in different fields, so it’s really nice to be able to collaborate in this way—which requires a huge amount of trust in each other—but pushing each other too. And there are not many people, I think, who understand clothing as deeply as Luca does.

I think Allerton may have inspired this idea of building a perfection that is almost like an armor, but then ultimately, you see that there are holes in it—in the trouser, in the sweater. It all looks very together at first, but then you realize it’s not.

there were plenty of memorable moments for Jonathan Anderson—but few were quite as awe-inspiring as his first day of filming, walking through the back lot of Rome’s legendary Cinecittà Studios. “One of my favorite films is Sunset Boulevard, and it reminded me of the scene when Norma goes to the studios, and there’s just cinema happening,” Anderson says over Zoom from Los Angeles, where Queer had premiered the night before, with genuine wide-eyed wonderment. “You enter into one of those dark spaces and find a stage lit as a 1950s Mexican street. Then you’re in the middle of the jungle. If you were to ask a child what cinema is, it would be this.”