Want to know exactly what a costume designer does? Let Ellen Mirojnick, BAFTA nominated costume designer on films such as Wall Street, Chaplin, and Cloverfield explain it to you. Here she talks exclusively to Clothes on Film. Clothes on Film, Chris: Can you tell us, as simply as possible, what the role of a movie costume designer is? Ellen Mirojnick: The costume designer is responsible for creating each character’s look that will be the visual translation of the directors’ vision of the film. COF: Do all costume designers make costumes themselves? EM: I don’t sew or stitch myself. I am sure there are some designers who do, but generally the…

Costume design comes in three main forms: visible (the 1950s, Dior inspired gowns in Anna Karenina for example), invisible (the impeccable yet subtle military uniforms in War Horse) and subtextual – those apparently commonplace costumes that actually possess a hidden meaning, a concept employed most effectively this year in horror satire The Cabin in the Woods. The film’s costume designer Shawna Trpcic created a subtle reversal for the main characters – five archetypes from horror movie folklore. Think of the teenage victims in Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th; they are all variations of the underwear flashing tramp, the bespectacled academic, the jock in his Varsity…

The highly anticipated season five premiere of Game of Thrones aired across the globe this week, giving us tantalising glimpses of where our favorite characters are now. We saw two brief scenes of Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner), who had a major makeover at the end of Season Four. With this new direction in her character, where will she end up in Season Five? In this little addendum to our previous analysis of her wardrobe, we explore the character clues in Sansa’s striking new look (costume design by Michele Clapton). Sansa has not had it easy so far. During the last few seasons she has been trapped in King’s Landing, tortured…

Second and final part in our sartorial analysis of Sherlock Holmes (2009), complete with insight from costume designer Jenny Beavan. Excited by the mystery of Lord Blackwood’s apparent ‘resurrection’, Holmes actually makes a genuine effort to appear neat for once (the restaurant date does not count as he was prompted). Holmes strolls into the cemetery beside Watson and Constable Clark wearing a black single breasted whale cord frock coat, high fastening with stand collar waistcoat in green and gold flower pattern silk, striped silk scarf, light grey pinstripe trousers, white shirt with unbuttoned cuffs, wideawake hat (too wide a brim for a trilby, too soft for a homburg) and round-framed…

Into the Woods opened on Broadway in 1987, with the music and lyrics written by Stephen Sondheim and the book by James Lapine. It is Sondheim’s most performed musical and one of his best known works. The story combines familiar characters from childhood fairy tales such as Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, and the ubiquitous Witch, and explores their journeys to get their wish, as well as the negative consequences of the small dishonesties committed by each character to get what they want. As the witch sings, “Told a little lie/Stole a little gold/Broke a little vow/Did you?/Had to get your prince/Had to get your cow/Had to get your wish/Doesn’t…

Moments of sartorial significance, and that glimmer of recognition that we feel upon seeing an onscreen outfit worn more than once are found throughout Smooth Talk, Joyce Chopra’s underseen 1986 adaptation of a Joyce Carol Oates short story. The film is rife with all the monotony of life and charming ensembles we expect of a teenage girl in the summer, yet it simultaneously offers complexity and creepiness. Laura Dern plays Connie, an ingénue spending her days as an “unfinished girl, waiting for completion of some sort” (Quart 74). In her essay, “Smoothing Out the Rough Spots: The Film Adaptation of ‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’” Rebecca Sumner…

If you’re not watching BBC 2’s gangster western Peaky Blinders, stop reading now and seek it out on iPlayer – there’s still one episode left so you have time to join the party. Peaky Blinders is the slow burning tale of a volatile, family led criminal gang, headed by calculating brother Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy), and their rise to power in post-World War I Birmingham. It does not sound glamorous and it isn’t, yet is all the more compelling for embracing the filthy side of what many considered to be the cusp of the ‘Roaring Twenties’. Not in Birmingham it wasn’t. Thankfully Peaky Blinders had costume designer Stephanie Collie (Lock,…

Filmmaker and costume designer Sophie Black recounts her personal interpretation of Heathers, a film defined by vivid visual interpretation. It is just a coincidence that the first time I saw Michael Lehmann’s Heathers (1988) was within hours of the first time I saw David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986), and I immediately made comparisons between the two films which I may have not noticed otherwise. More people are quick to compare Heathers to the work of Tim Burton, because of the associates he had on the film (producer Denise Di Novi and star Winona Ryder, to name but two) and the fact that the candy-coloured suburban setting mirrors that of Edward…

Not so much Clothes on Film as Underwear on Film, but far from just an excuse to show off a girl in her smalls, classic Mod era film Quadrophenia (1979) illustrates an interesting point concerning female hosiery in the 1960s. The sixties was the decade for tights. They were an ideal accompaniment to the mini skirt and came in a wide variety of colours, normally as bright and garish as possible. Thanks to innovations in textile production, tights (or pantyhose in the U.S.) were straightforward to produce and even easier to wear. Plus with mini skirt hems rising all the time, even the most confident of girls might have baulked…

He is the whitest of the white trash, the kind of man who dumps raw sewage in a storm drain and kidnaps your boss as a Christmas present. And the only man to ever combine a leather belt with a bathrobe. Randy Quaid has played lovable moocher ‘Cousin Eddie’ in four separate National Lampoon films, but his most famous performance still resides at yuletide. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989, directed by Jeremiah C. Chechik) has weathered years of apathy to become something of a seasonal favourite. Watching Chevy Chase’s bipolar family man Clark Griswold lose his rag every December is now a festive tradition . Yet Clark is not really…