Jacqueline West costumes 'Benjamin Button'

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," a haunting and unsettling film fable, stars Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett in a tale that spans from 1919 to 2005. Covering so many decades is no easy task for the actors, to be sure, but harder yet, perhaps, for the woman who had to come up with the clothing to match all those eras.

"That was the biggest challenge of the movie," says "Button" costume designer Jacqueline West, who received an Oscar nod last week for her work on the film and was also nominated by the Costume Designers Guild, which will bestow its awards Feb. 17. "The challenge was keeping the integrity in so many eras, so many decades and so many characters that had to evolve, but yet keep their internal essence."

Blanchett's Daisy and Pitt's Benjamin meet as children. He was born looking old and appears younger as he ages. As their outward ages begin to finally match up, the pair go out and she wears a stunning red dress with short sleeves, a tight bodice and a longer tea-length full skirt that steals the scene, if not the whole film. Tell me about that red dress.

It was originally designed for a nightclub scene in the '40s in New Orleans, and at the last minute I decided to have her dance in it. But she really sold that dress to David [Fincher, the director]. David doesn't like red. But when I put it on Cate, she said, "Let me show David." She said to him, "It has to be red." She said that David, never having worn a red dress himself, "just doesn't understand the power of it."

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What's it like working with David Fincher?

He's a real artist. Every scene he frames is like a painting. I would walk onto the set to see how he'd lined up the shot, and it would be like looking at a Degas or a Lautrec. So it was amazing, getting to dress the people to put in his painting. That's what I felt like.

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Tell me about the Sherpa jacket Brad wore when he met Tilda Swinton as Elizabeth in the elevator.

That was actually a leather jacket based on a military officer seaman's coat from the '30s. I figured his wardrobe would all be pretty old, hand-me-downs, or secondhand. It was also really an homage to Gary Cooper in "For Whom the Bell Tolls."

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Tell me about Brad's driving cap he wears in Paris. Have I seen him wearing that in his personal life?