Daphne du Maurier‘s original novel My Cousin Rachel apparently does not specify the exact period in which it’s set, but implies some time toward the end of the 19th century on the Cornish coast. This new version of the story starring Rachel Weisz and Sam Claflin actually positions itself in a specific time frame, as decided upon by director Roger Michell and costume designer Dinah Collin, namely the year 1840. We have an exclusive featurette about the costume design of My Cousin Rachel, which although brief goes into some detail about what to expect from the finished film: What is most fascinating is just why 1840 was chosen. It was…

She arrives at the support group just as the hugging begins. “This is cancer, right?” she asks, her pallid skin and sunken eyes suggesting she could well be a sufferer. Except this is a support group for testicular cancer and Marla doesn’t have any balls, not the kind that can be removed by surgery anyway. Mischievous Marla Singer: black fur coat, sunglasses, squashed black hat and breathing through a cigarette. On the surface Marla looks like a femme fatale, though in truth she is not manipulative enough to fit the mould. In Tyler Durden’s words she is “rock bottom”. Once mislaid, now gone for good. As an embodiment of affected…

Costume designer Ann Roth’s template for Working Girl (1988, directed by Mike Nichols) is especially astute with regards to the social and geographical make up of its characters. Protagonist Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith) is a homely girl raised and living in Staten Island, New York. Currently working as a secretary in Manhattan (not ‘executive assistant’, reflecting vernacular of the time), as is her best friend Cynthia (Joan Cusack). Tess, however, has gained a degree through night school and harbours ambitions to use it for more constructive tasks than answering the telephone and fetching toilet paper for bawdy stockbrokers. After being set up for a ‘date’ that turned out to be…

SPOILERS Ahead of a detailed interview with Star Wars: The Force Awakens costume designer Michael Kaplan (currently hard at work on Episode VIII), we take a brief look at his undeniable achievement in bringing the 1970s – early 80’s back to life right here in the present. How do you make the now look old when paradoxically it is supposed to be the new? Well, you go simple. We say simple, but we mean ‘back to basics’. This is not the prequels; The Force Awakens takes place thirty years after the Rebellion defeated the Empire. Now both sides are in state of rebuilding so there is little call for Padmae’s…

Filmmaker Nic Fforde discusses how he come to realise the importance of costume design in his projects. Stories in films are all familiar to us in some way, no matter how remote the setting. The hell that unfolds aboard the Nostromo in Alien, LA’s icy criminal underworld in Heat or Rope’s Ivy League dinner party – a good story well told will whisk you away to its own self–contained world. All the tools of filmmaking are there to help create these worlds. What part does costume play in all this? My day job is to make films for advertising. We work on low budgets with small documentary crews. Whatever our…

When glass-eyed Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan) tells Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio) that all the excess and splendour he drowns in is “from your perfect, irresistible imagination”, it’s hard not to see this entire film in this same light. Director, producer Baz Luhrmann and his wife, costume designer, production designer and co-producer Catherine Martin have concocted a vision of the early 1920s that did not exist yet somehow feels entirely natural. Their Great Gatsby is a twenties parallel universe; the twenties reloaded if you will. This is a flavour of the 1920s, those details that cinemagoers with just a passing knowledge of the era can recognise: cloche hats, bobbed hair, short…

Perhaps the most mind-churning mainstream film of recent years, Inception is testament to the power of great costume design. Not only does it look sumptuous, thanks to all those 3 pc suits and silk ties, but because of costume designer Jeffrey Kurland and director Christopher Nolan’s commitment to clothing serving an implicit function, Inception is at least partially decipherable by what the characters wear. The screen is filled with costume clues to interpret. Jeffrey Kurland has been costume designer on thirty seven feature films, including Ocean’s Eleven (2001) and Collateral (2004), though Inception is his first collaboration with Chris Nolan. Here he explains exclusively to Clothes on Film his sartorial…

“We are stardust, we are golden”, sang Joni Mitchell of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, held August 15-18th 1969, at a dairy farm in the Catskills near the hamlet of White Lake in the town of Bethel, New York. The irony was, she wasn’t even there. A further irony follows in that whilst a myriad of psychedelic colours are synonymous with the Woodstock nation, one of the most revered choices of dress, clearly shown in the documentary Woodstock (1970) is a simple white leather fringed lace-up tunic-style vest and bell bottom trousers. It is worn by one of the first female rock stars, the lead singer of Jefferson Airplane,…

MINOR SPOILERS Like any film with an extended period of time between the original and sequel(s), T2: Trainspotting (2017) is required to form an immediate connection with its audience. Twenty years have passed, yet we must feel accustomed to this world. For every element of change, something else must remain the same. We take comfort in what we know; it allows us to enjoy the new without fear of the unknown. If T2 had been released a couple of years after Trainspotting (1996), it could potentially have been set in Benidorm. Transplanting our anti-heroes from Scotland to Spain is fine when they are fresh in our conscious mind, but twenty…

Levi’s® Spring Bottom pants are a most fascinating garment. Introduced in 1889 they are essentially jean trousers intended for Victorian (and later Edwardian) gentlemen. This is the first time Levi’s had focused their products on such an audience. Previously their stock in trade was miners and loggers, but this was a very early attempt by the company to branch out. Spring Bottom pants are a classic item of denim history, yet most folk have probably never heard of them. With this in mind we contacted costume designer Jenny Beavan recently and asked if she would consider putting them in the next Sherlock Holmes film. No-one was paying us to do…