As spoilt yet charming Frances Stevens, Grace Kelly wears a total of ten separate costumes in Alfred Hitchcock’s lavish romantic caper To Catch a Thief (1954). All outfits were designed by easily the most famous costume designer who ever lived, Edith Head. Typical for Head, Frances’ outfits are a mix of steady, daring and occasionally bizarre, including a pale yellow one-piece swimsuit with ‘cats eye’ sunglasses, an unflattering blue tunic trouser suit and wild 18th century gold lamé gown with piled up sausage curls wig. For our coverage, three of the more interesting ensembles have been chosen, each reflecting a facet of Frances’ personality and in some way informing the…

The week in costume stories and links. FIDM Gorgeous costumes on display from 2013 released movies. Tyranny of Style takes you there… Some more good FIDM photos at Frocktalk. Downton Abbey Insightful gallery notes by costumer Caroline McCall. Sure, baby boys in the early 1920s would’ve worn a dress, but that would definitely have confused viewers. How Wool is produced for Fabric Riveting Costume Cafe podcast with Franny Kansteiner of Gum Tree Farm and Organic Wool Works. Costumer of Awesome Second shout for this beyond hilarious, gif heavy tubmlr by an (unnamed) costume designer currently working in the business. The Walking Dead Another thorough interview with costume designer Eulyn Womble,…

They have finally done it. After four years in development, Nike has recreated their famous Nike MAG trainers worn by Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly in Back to the Future Part II (1989). Thing is, at their current price on eBay you will be unlikely to ever actually see a pair, let alone own them. Nike has opted for eBay only auctions to sell these new pairs of which only 1,500 have been made. All proceeds go to the Michael J. Fox Foundation to benefit sufferers of Parkinson’s Disease. Bidding is currently around the $5,000 mark and climbing fast. With just a few hours left until the first auctions…

Three international banners for Tron Legacy have just been released by Disney. The information drip feed for this film is relatively slow, but these do at least reveal some detail of the light suit costume. To be fair the Jeff Bridges as Kevin Flynn banner is the only new one. Here he is wearing a long twill weave coat with flared sleeves over his robe (which we must say seems entirely computer rendered in this image). Those light boots look amazing, however. Incidentally, Adidas have made some Tron inspired Stan Smiths to tie in with the movie, as well as two high-tops revealed at Comic Con in July. Unfortunately these…

An American Werewolf in London A screening at the Billy Wilder theater in Los Angeles on the 26th, with Deborah Nadoolman Landis in attendance to sign copies of her book ‘Hollywood Costume’ (we’re in that!). Shawna Trpcic It’s question time with Shawna Trpcic. What a fun idea! Halloween FrockTalk’s guide to looking suitably fab and/or disgusting. Thor: The Dark World Costume designer Wendy Partridge (another new set of hands for Thor) chats briefly about her work on the upcoming film. Rush Inspired by her friend Ellen Crawshaw working as a costume assistant on Rush, fashion historian and all round sartorial resource Amber Butchart analyses cars and Formula 1 style in…

Basic Instinct is a movie that even its director Paul Verhoeven has described as “nonsense”, yet one cannot argue with the impact of the white dress Sharon Stone wears for the interrogation scene. Plus there is far more going on here than an absence of underwear. When this erotic thriller was released in 1992 it was notorious long before projectors whirred to life. Picketed on set by gay and lesbian groups in San Francisco for what they considered to be a stereotypical and offensive view of homosexuality, the film was lucky to have gotten made at all. Of course this was before the furore over that close up, not to…

Although Tron (1982) is often cited as the first use of computer animation in mainstream film, there is far more to its significance than what we see on screen. As an artistic influence on everything from fashion to music, Tron has created a cultural cosmos we now term its ‘legacy’. All this thanks to a 29 year baby boomer who dared to dream idealistic… Creator and director of the original Tron, Steven Lisberger, freely admits that his film, the very idea in fact, was born out of hippie ideology; the creation of unity between the analogue and digital world: We were idealistic. The Gen-Xers are much more realistic, but at…

If there’s one thing that doesn’t mean much in World War Z, it’s looking presentable. This is costume at its worst, so to speak. Clothes that have been thrown through panes of glass or off the top of buildings, torn, stained and saturated with blood. This is the art of breaking down. Breaking down, distressing, aging, these basically achieve the same result – they make clothes seem more believably lived in, or in the case of World War Z’s zombie hoards, believably dead in. Clothes in movies are broken down by many tried and tested methods. Professional ‘agers’ chisel with files and sandpaper, unpick seams, wash over and over, even…

In a week of new and exciting trailers, the first for director Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of The Great Gatsby must surely be the most thrilling of all, certainly for aficionados of exotic period costume and lots of twinkly things. Based purely on tone this frenetic footage is likely to upset literary purists, but to those familiar with Luhrmann’s back catalogue (Romeo & Juliet, Moulin Rouge!), the gaudy, flashy visuals and controversial choice of contemporary music (Jay-Z and Kayne West) will not come as a great surprise. Thankfully two time Academy Award winner Catherine Martin’s costumes are showcased in all their OTT glory. Deliberately impossible to miss; this is 1922, the…

A preview of Clothes on Film editor Christopher Laverty’s article on the vibrant costume design of Dick Tracy for Arts Illustrated magazine. Truly unique, Dick Tracy is as close to a comic strip brought to life as any film before or since. This was director and star Warren Beatty’s goal; not to interpret the comic, but to paint it directly onto a cinematic canvas. He achieved this by embracing the superficial qualities of the painted page, the bright colours, exaggerated structures, madcap caricatures, and placing them front and centre. Dick Tracy is an all knowing pantomime. The original Dick Tracy comic strip first published in the United States in 1931,…