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[…] Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use. To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy

As a new feature for Clothes on Film, we will uploading regular videos (say every couple of weeks) to YouTube examining the costume design of new and classic movies, plus selected television and trailers. This[…] Costume designer Ann Roth, arguably one of the greatest of her craft still working in Hollywood, has costumed director Steven Spielberg’s latest The Post, and by the looks of this first trailer we are in[…] Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use. To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy

There is little point in Clothes on Film delving too deeply into the first trailer for director J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars sequel The Force Awakens, mainly because it is just so much speculation at the[…] 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…

Directed By: Tom Hooper Starring: Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter The King’s Speech is a majestic tale set in a world of buttoned-up repression and austere buildings that creak as much as their inhabitants. Tom Hooper’s direction is confident and explicit. There is little subtext beyond the obvious contrast with our current royal family and the media control over their lives. Opting for reflection rather than display, plus no doubt hampered by a minuscule budget, costume designer Jenny Beavan speculates the 1925–39 setting rather than recreates it. For example, Colin Firth as frustrated King George VI, or ‘Bertie’ to those he held dear, was a Naval officer, a…

Director Peter Jackson wanted Ann to be an old fashioned, sexually defined heroine. Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use. To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy

Director Peter Jackson wanted Ann to be an old fashioned, sexually defined heroine. Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use. To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy

Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin bring us the twenties reloaded. Sonia Grande’s costume design for Midnight in Paris offers everything we expect of 1920s Paris and the contemporary nouveau riche. Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use. To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy

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[…] MILD SPOILERS The hoodie has as much to say about it’s wearer as, say, the white t-shirt does. By which I mean that, depending on context, it can say anything. The white t-shirt can imply[…] It was late November, 2016 when I visited the set of The Conjuring 2 (directed by James Wan). The reason I never wrote about it for Clothes on Film or anywhere else was because of[…] It’s the most celebrated, the…

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…

So much has been written about H.R. Giger’s justly-renowned xenomorph design that the human costume design in the Alien movies goes largely unnoticed, argues film critic Simon Kinnear. In the first of a two-part special, we revisit the saga on Blu-ray to look at just how important these costumes are in contextualising primal terror. Traditionally, costume designers in science-fiction movies depicted the future as being utilitarian, uniform and very clinical: think of Forbidden Planet (1956) or 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) for good examples of the space-faring look. The early 1970s saw a slight sea-change when Dark Star (1974), the John Carpenter film scripted by future Alien creator Dan O’Bannon,…