Costume designer Casey Storm is obsessed with detail — whether that means pulling 200 different raincoats for Michael Jackson, making blonde-and-beautiful actress Cameron Diaz look shockingly ordinary, or translating costumes from a classic children’s book for his latest project: an adaptation of illustrator Maurice Sendak’s WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE. Here he talks about the language of clothing, working with director Spike Jonze, and why every last button is crucial in crafting characters and telling a story.

Me in a green sequined outfit from a play I was in as a kid — it’s one of my first costumes

On becoming a costume designer:
It all happened by accident. I was 20 years old and hanging out at a party when this friend said he was looking for someone to pull some clothes for a video. Spike [Jonze] was there and said, “You should get Casey to do it. He likes clothes.” And from then on everyone assumed I was a costume designer. I didn’t even know that was a job. My dad was a sitcom director, so I was around the industry, but I had no idea I could turn my love and obsession for clothes into a career.

On Spike Jonze and the team:
He’s like a brother. He has an amazing ability to find people whom he admires and then ask them to do something they’ve never done before. He knows who gets his creative vision and will execute it perfectly. It’s exciting to work with him because it’s super-collaborative. The main group has been together for years. The “pack,” as Jonze refers to them, is Spike, Vince, Lance, Eric, K.K. Barrett, Thomas Smith, and Sonny Gerasimowicz. We all have opinions and go back and forth until it feels right. We like to get into each other’s business. We fight and support, but we also know when to stand back and respect someone’s creative vision. It’s just a bunch of fools hanging out together and trying to do something great. In some ways it feels a lot like making videos with friends as teenagers, except now it’s on a larger scale.

On the relationship between costume and character:
I know if I wear a tailored suit, I’ll walk and stand a little different than if I were wearing jeans. It’s the same for an actor and their character. How do we give a character their own “stuff”? If an item of clothing is expensive, high-quality, tailored, it all determines how an actor will play their role. It’s the tiny details that make it so much more interesting for a costume designer. It’s my job to obsess over whether a dye is 2 percent darker, or if a button is a little beaten up. Even if it doesn’t make it on camera, it’s all the things that go into making a character more authentic and believable. It’s like my little secret that makes me feel more connected to the character.

On his relationship with actors:
In ZODIAC, Robert Downey Jr. was super-involved in his character’s wardrobe. He had very strong ideas on how he wanted his character to look and feel. He did a lot of research and learned that his character’s father had been in the military, so we subtly weaved that into the wardrobe. Mark Ruffalo wanted his character to wear a necklace. You didn’t necessarily see it on camera but that didn’t matter. It was important because it was significant for Mark.

ZODIAC: early notes to myself on characters

On the wolf suit:
The biggest challenge was getting the wolf suit right. It’s tough when you have so much scrutiny on just one suit. How do you interpret a two-dimensional sketch? How do we get the details? We spent two months just taking snaps, playing with fabrics, etc. One of our first conclusions was that the ears needed more “attitude,” so we put wire in them so they could change. Another concern was that Maurice’s original drawing had claws, but we still needed Max to have use of his hands. We noticed cinematographer Lance Acord’s son wearing fingerless gloves and thought they were a good solution because they kind of resembled claws. It was also important that there was a cool sense of newness to the suit, so we put him in Converse. Despite how crazy his adventure was, we still wanted that connection to the real world.

My art-direction notes for the wolf suit in WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE

On working with Maurice Sendak:
It was intimidating and exciting, but at the same time, we all knew what we were doing. Maurice completely trusted Spike’s vision, so it was fairly open. It was a week before we started shooting that Spike and I had a two-hour conversation with him. Maurice had already seen photos and rough samples, so we just talked about a couple options like the hood up versus the hood down. We decided that when Max needed to look more vulnerable, the hood would be down. We talked about the buttons being chipped because we wanted it to feel like an old suit that he’d almost grown out of. Maurice wasn’t caught up in the details. He just cared that it was coming from the right place.

On Cameron Diaz:
With BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, it was important that there was always something off with the character’s costumes, so we’d reveal some weirdness and personality. When I was brainstorming Cameron’s character, I took a lot of photos of real people, moms, weird cousins, non-L.A. people. One day we were trying on clothes at Spike’s house with Cameron and we dressed her up in a horrible full-length skirt, bad sweatshirt, and wig. We then went to Radio Shack to see if anyone recognized her, and they didn’t. That weekend she went to the mall with friends dressed as her character and just walked around. She said she found it so liberating. Our dream was always that Vogue would do a cover with a split screen, one half with the awkward Lotte and the other with Cameron the film star.

BEING JOHN MALKOVICH: early notes to myself on characters

On working with Michael Jackson:
He was the hero of my childhood. We worked together on the STRANGER IN MOSCOW video shoot because his normal guy was doing the HIStory tour. The big item was the raincoat, so I pulled 200 of them and together we went through them all, trying to find the perfect one. Before the shoot you were given guidelines like he needed deep pockets so when he danced he could control it like wings. Little things like that. The weirdest thing was that he was so normal. In a way he behaved like a 10-year-old schoolgirl — funny, flirty, sassy. He’d throw Tic Tacs at me, and then when I turned around he’d look the other way. His people said that was a sign he liked you. Apparently he always carried Tic Tacs for that reason.

Me in my Spiderman costume with my former band, Chardonnay, from the New York Times Style magazine

On his personal style:
My personal style changes all the time. Right now I have a uniform of jeans and oxfords. Oh, and I love wearing hats.