One of my favorite things in Inception is the way everyone is dressed, mix of futuristic and cool retro. Jeffrey Kurland did the costume design and there’s an interview with him on Clothes On Film. He also did Ocean’s Eleven and Collateral, two other movies with great suits and looks.
Not wanting to date the film, I was trying to create an upscale world of business and intrigue with architecture being a constant metaphorical thread running throughout… definitely forward thinking, without being futuristic. That enabled me to travel from reality to dreams and back, keeping a certain amount of stylization that would serve all the situations presented in the script.