Everyone talks about the sandworms and the spice, but the coolest thing Frank Herbert invented for Dune—even he seemed to think so—was the stillsuit. Worn by the inhabitants of the desert planet Arrakis, stillsuits capture any moisture that leaves the body and recycle it back into drinkable water. They also look pretty sick, all tubes and piping and chest plates (a cosplayer’s wet dream). For Denis Villeneuve’s Dune adaptation, costume designer Jacqueline West wanted the look of the stillsuits to reflect their ecological necessity. “It was such a prophetic book about a planet that was robbed, as ours has been, of its resources,” she says. “We wanted the suit to be made exactly as it would have been with Frank Herbert’s descriptions.” Could such a thing ever work in the real world? Most likely not—but it’s still cool to deconstruct.
Mask Up
In the desert, grains of sand can pelt the face at skin-shredding speeds. Herbert imagined a mask that covered all but the eyes—they’re protected by hoods—and filtered out sand and other particles in the air. Though West’s version didn’t perform the latter function, it did protect the actors from flying grit on set.
On the Nose
In Dune, stillsuit wearers are instructed to breathe in through their mouth and out through their nose, and any moisture from the exhale is captured by tubes attached to their nostrils. West’s version wasn’t a working breathing apparatus, she says, but “it had to be comfortably fitted into the nose of the actors.” Just try not to sneeze.
Material Science
One of West’s challenges was to design suits that looked as though they kept moisture in but also didn’t suffocate the actors. To do that, the costumers constructed a “fabric of the future” out of heat-melded layers of foam combined with cotton gauze and acrylic mesh. It couldn’t actually perform a stillsuit’s key survival functions, though—trapping perspiration and pulling out the salt (a notion that backfires to begin with, as the point of sweat is that it cools the body through evaporation).
Get Pumped
Stillsuits store water wherever there’s space and then use motion to circulate it around the body—even in West’s real-life versions. To keep the actors cool while filming in the scorching deserts of the Middle East, her suits had pockets of water near the head and anywhere they would look natural—thighs, chest, biceps, butt. “We put them wherever they would keep a nice shape,” West says. “They had to look good.”
Perfect Fit
Stillsuits hug the body like a second skin. So West, in close collaboration with Villeneuve and dozens of costumers, made mannequins of each actor and used them to fabricate a suit to their exact measurements. “They were built amazingly well,” says Javier Bardem, who plays the Fremen leader Stilgar.
Porta Potty
Not only can you whiz and poop in your stillsuit, it’s encouraged, as that’s your main source of recycled water. Alas, Dune’s stars weren’t able to use their costumes as diapers (that we know of). Not even the finest NASA tech—the ISS’s Urine Processor Assembly—could do what Herbert described.
Body of Work
The human body is the engine of a stillsuit. Walking, running, breathing—Herbert imagined all that energy could be harnessed to power the reactions necessary to recycle water. Sadly, it’s pure fiction: Our bodies can’t get enough energy from the food and oxygen we ingest to turn waste back into drinkable H2O.
