MOVIES - Dec. 25, 2005

SUTTIRAT LARLARB

Costume designer

If the oversized spacesuit helmets in the upcoming thriller “Sunshine” remind you of “South Park’s” Kenny, good thing -- it’s an intentional homage. Suttirat Larlarb, making her feature film debut as a costume designer on director Danny Boyle’s futuristic drama, has drawn on an eclectic array of references to outfit the film’s astronauts, who are racing across space to repair the sun before it flames out.

“Danny always talked of the spacesuits as a wearable set,” says Larlarb. “It’s not just clothing. It’s a protective vehicle.”

An art director on “K-Pax,” “The Skeleton Key” and Mira Nair’s upcoming “The Namesake,” the 34-year-old Larlarb brings to the wardrobe department a set designer’s balance between function and form. “This should not be a fashion show -- cool to impress the audience or each other,” Larlarb says of “Sunshine.” “It’s a group of scientists and experts. There shouldn’t be a vanity to what they are wearing.”

The clothes do, however, need to protect the astronauts from the sun’s eviscerating rays, which yielded the giant Kenny-sized helmet used in a spacewalk. “I was so worried about the spacesuit, I felt like I had to design it first,” says Larlarb, who grew up in Los Angeles and attended Stanford University and the Yale School of Drama. “It’s going to be the most peculiar costume.”

And, perhaps, the launch of a most interesting career.