Dressing the Crazy Rich Asians: how costume designer Mary Vogt shaped look of film’s stars – with help of Michelle Yeoh’s jewellery

Early one morning in Kuala Lumpur, costume designer Mary Vogt received a phone call from a Tokyo executive for Ralph Lauren in Asia, asking if she would consider any of the brand’s couture offerings for use in the movie she was working on, Crazy Rich Asians. She selected a few, figuring she would end up getting sent one or two.

“Two days later I received this gigantic box of dresses,” Vogt says. “They must have sent me 30.”

The enthusiasm shown by the luxury American fashion brand towards the film was not an exception. Once word got out that Crazy Rich Asians, based on the bestselling book by Kevin Kwan, was in production in Kuala Lumpur, “designers were clamouring” for the stars to wear their offerings, Vogt says.

For Vogt, who had just finished with the Charlize Theron film Flarsky due out next year, and Kong: Skull Island before that, working on a film with a high fashion quotient and a glamorous all-star Asian cast might have been a little intimidating. But she successfully created a stylish Singapore-set high-society tableau, rife with creations from Elie Saab and Dior – and hefty jewellery pieces from the personal collection of star Michelle Yeoh.

Dressing Yeoh and the rest of the Crazy entourage was a memorable gig for Vogt, who grew up in Long Beach, California, and would put on plays with family and friends in her backyard.

“Nobody wanted to do the costumes except me,” she says over an iced tea on a warm Los Angeles afternoon. “So I always had a job.”