How costume designer Mara Zigler became one to watch on Canada’s film scene

Mara Zigler first fell in love with clothing working for Toronto vintage stores as a picker, snatching second-hand treasures off a fast-moving conveyor belt where, she says, “everything is old, everything is stinky, everything has lived a life.” On the line, you’ve got to act fast, because once the clothes are gone, they’re gone. “You’re like an archaeologist for clothing,” Zigler says. The experience helped her develop an expert eye for everyday garments that convey a sense of lived-in history and set her on her way to become the costume designer to watch in Canada’s independent film scene.
Zigler is drawn to projects with shoestring budgets and outsized acclaim. She designed the costumes for two films that premiered at this month’s Toronto International Film Festival: Kazik Radwanski’s Matt and Mara and Sofia Bohdanowicz’s Measures for a Funeral. In 2023, she was nominated for CAFTCAD’s Costume Design award in independent film for Something You Said Last Night, Luis De Filippis’s tender debut about a young trans woman on vacation with her family, on top of four career nominations for Canadian Screen Awards.
In Zigler’s work, costume design is another vehicle for storytelling. She doesn’t rely on archetypes that feel one-dimensional, says the actor Deragh Campbell, who worked with Zigler on both Matt and Mara and Measures for a Funeral. “It’s like yourself more fully expressed,” Campbell says, “because she has such an extraordinary understanding of colour and shape and different eras.” Nailing that kind of realistic specificity often requires as much research as the ornate, historical costumes on a show like Bridgerton.
An emotional acuity and talent for crafting psychologically vivid characters through legible attire are Zigler’s creative superpowers. For the final scene in Measures for a Funeral, which follows a woman researching the life of Canadian violinist Kathleen Parlow, she found the perfect piece for Campbell’s character Audrey: a soft white handknit sweater from the 1960s. “I know all these things that she’s experiencing,” Zigler says of Audrey’s emotional state. “She’s going to want to feel something soft and close to her skin. There has to be a delicacy and a preciousness to it.”
Costume designers are often overlooked for their influence on real-life style. For example, Zigler had the idea to dress Something You Said Last Night’s protagonist Ren in bloomers long before brands including the Row and Bode released their own versions. Zigler knows it’s unlikely that the designers behind those labels have seen the film, but it suggests they’re all connecting to the same sartorial zeitgeist.
Only the fashion designer gets the credit, however – and reaps its benefits. Jonathan Anderson, who designs for Loewe and JW Anderson, recently served as the costume designer on the romantic sports drama Challengers, outfitting the three main characters mostly in brands he works on. Anderson marketed his costume work in ways other film designers can’t. “He can create a runway within a film, and then put those items on the biggest stars in the world,” Zigler says.
Zigler is content to hone her artistry behind the scenes. For her, good costume design requires “this perfect tension between something that’s invisible and something that’s extremely expressive at the same time,” she says.