Recently we were fortunate enough to get our hands on Amber Jane Butchart’s new book, her ‘Fashion Miscellany’, which has just been published by The IIex Press. If you don’t already know, Amber is a contributor to Clothes on Film and will soon be teaming up with editor Christopher Laverty for an evening of Jazz Era discussion at the British Library. Her book, by the way, is flippin’ brilliant. If you care even slightly about what we wear and why, AJBFM is an indispensable purchase. The layout of it is simple enough. It’s basically designed as a dip-in-and-out for research, or whenever you fancy a flick though. We’d call this…

Swing Time (1936) is full of lovely outfits, and all very luxurious thirties to lure cinemagoers out of their economic depression. Fred is near permanently attired in full evening suit – bar an immaculate fur collared overcoat and silk scarf for the snow sequence, while Ginger dons costume designer Bernard Newman’s flowing gowns for dancing and Chanel style suits and fox fur for day wear. Among all this luxury is a plain, yet deliciously feminine black dress worn for the ‘Pick Yourself Up’ waltz. This is a classic example of 1930s praise for a curvy female form. Post Hays code, dresses displayed less flesh but were pulled in tighter for…

Playing computer hacker Lisbeth Salander, Noomi Rapace embodies the character in such a exhaustive way that picturing anyone else in the role was, until recently, impossible. Defined by copious piercings, a ragged biker leather jacket and skinny jeans, Lisbeth is a blatant symbol of unconformity. From author Stieg Larsson’s creation to costume designer Cilla Rörby’s interpretation for the screen, Lisbeth harks back to the mid-1970s; the early days of punk and a desire to skew superficial expectations. Lisbeth’s costume changes for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009, directed by Niels Arden Oplev) are faithful, certainly in spirit, to Larsson’s Millennium novels. The overall shock factor has been toned down…

Eastern Promises (2007). The setting: London. The location: burger joint. The outfit: Viggo Mortensen’s gorgeously cut black double breasted suit. It is simply exquisite. Black wool four-on-one double breasted suit with flap hip pockets and rope shoulders; white cotton-poplin turn-down collar shirt; black knitted tie. Mortensen’s mob infiltrator Nikolai is surely the best dressed Russki knuckle duster in the capital? On Viggo’s tall, slim frame the jacket appears elongated, helped by the high four on one button configuration (four buttons on the front of the jacket, one that fastens bellow the lapel line). It seems almost as though it should be a six on two, but this might have made…

By no means intended as an exhaustive list, Clothes on Film ponder an overview of 2011 in costume. If there is a more joyous film this year, we haven’t seen it. Clothes on Film talk exclusively to costume designer of The Artist, Mark Bridges.