As a Handpicked blog, Clothes on Film can accommodate Leaderboard ads (728×90), MPUs (max 468px), columns (160×160) and takers. Just ask. For advertising enquiries contact [email protected] To understand why you should advertise with Clothes on Film, definitely swing by the PRESS section. And here is a note about ‘cookies’, which the law says I have to put here even though you most likely know it already: What are cookies? ‘Cookies’ are small pieces of information that a website sends to your computer’s hard drive while you are viewing a website. How does this site use cookies? Tracking/user analysis cookies. This allows me to see how many people are visiting this…

Janty Yates, costume designer for director Ridley Scott’s long-awaited sci-fi prequel Prometheus, is multi-award nominated and an Oscar winner for Gladiator (2000). She almost always collaborates with Scott (they have made seven pictures together and counting), but has an impressive catalogue of stand-alone work including Jude (1996), Plunkett & Macleane (1999) and Miami Vice (2006). Clothes on Film caught up with Ms. Yates for an exclusive chat about the space suits and fatigues in Prometheus, which she describes as containing some of her proudest work since Gladiator. SPOILER WARNING: We suggest only reading this after you have seen the film. Clothes on Film, Chris: What was the costume brief for…

Matt Spaiser, creator of excellent blog The Suits of James Bond analyses the world’s sharpest spy in the film that started it all – Dr. No. James Bond has most likely influenced people’s suit-wearing habits more than any other fictional character has. Dr. No (1962, directed by Terence Young) established the classic look for the character for the many films that followed. Throughout Dr. No, Sean Connery wears five unique tailored ensembles. Each outfit is simple, classic and worthy of imitation. The idea was to put Bond in suits that were distinctly British, but keep things simple because a secret agent should never stand out. Yet because of this simplicity,…

Clothes from films set during 1950s Groundbreaking film La Dolce Vita offers a conflicting portrayal of masculinity. Unquestionably the most historically significant outfit Katie Holmes as Jackie Kennedy wears in the show is her rose pink tweed suit. This coral pink ensemble encompasses and challenges the absolute femininity of Grace Kelly. This is the most fun and elaborate outfit Grace Kelly wears in To Catch a Thief. As worn by Grace Kelly, this floaty, conspicuous dress is an appreciable nod to Dior’s ‘New Look’ of the late 1940s. Christie’s are auctioning several Edith Head sketches for costume designs worn by Grace Kelly. To celebrate Grease Sing-a-Long coming to Vue cinemas…

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[…] Clothes on Film were fortunate enough to be invited to a display of costumes from the latest adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express (2017), plus interview its costume designer Alexandra Byrne. An Oscar winner[…] Brigsby Bear tells the bizarre yet charming tale of a young man, James Pope (Kyle Mooney), who was kidnapped as a baby and subsequently released into the world many years later with no knowledge of[…] Amongst staggering aural and visual…

The first full-length trailer for Disney’s new live-action adaptation of Cinderella was this week and featured tantalising glimpses of what promises to be a visually gorgeous film. The costumes, designed by three time Academy Award[…] “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[…] On the surface the Babadook is just another bogeyman: prickly, sinewy, all arched limbs and spiky digits. And this is the point: he is just another bogeyman; it is what he represents that really matters.[…] Director Brian De Palma has…

When Arnold Scaasi opened his couture salon in 1964, he soon became a couturier to the stars. He was already a favoured designer for Barbra Streisand when he famously dressed her for the 1969 Oscars.[…] There has been an insane amount of discussion online about Bryce Dallas Howard’s character, Claire Dearing, since the release of Jurassic World (2015, costume designed Daniel Orlandi), mostly concerning the ‘running in heels’ sequences. I[…] From stills of this film alone you could easily be forgiven in thinking that I am Love (Io sono l’amore, 2009) was set during the 1960s. The designer clothes draped worn by lead members of[…] In honour of The Times’…

A rose tinted view of the Roaring Twenties, Sonia Grande’s costume design for Midnight in Paris (2011, directed by Woody Allen) offers everything we expect of the era, e.g. achingly fashionable female trends and the increasing Anglophile influence in male suits, yet does not become bogged down in a precise timeframe. Furthermore as the story segues from past to the present, a non specific retro vibe remains palpable, especially in Rachel McAdams’ loose fitting shirt dresses and Owen Wilson’s nubby tweed jackets. Wilson’s Gil is obviously intended to resemble Woody Allen during his late 1970s heyday, wearing natural waist trousers with brown leather belt, casual shirts and either two or…

The Levi jacket worn by Ken Takakura as Ken Tanaka in Japan set thriller The Yakuza (1974, costume design by Dorothy Jeakins) is not Japanese denim. It was not made in Japan but is nonetheless representative of a time when denim as symbol of burgeoning Americana in the East would take off into the stratosphere, and has remained so ever since. Although Levi products were imported into Japan before the 1970s (Levi International was created in 1965), it was not until mid-decade that a Tokyo office was established. This was in response to growing popularity of all things American in Japan, especially denim and especially Levi. There was no single…

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…