Featuring Yves Saint Laurent couture as cool and disaffecting its protagonist, Belle de Jour can be read effectively through costume.

It’s all about the shoes in Stoker. Featuring Yves Saint Laurent couture as cool and disaffecting its protagonist, Belle de Jour can be read effectively through costume.

Featuring Yves Saint Laurent couture as cool and disaffecting its protagonist, Belle de Jour can be read effectively through costume.

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…

Want to know exactly what a costume designer does? Let Ellen Mirojnick explain it to you. Lord Christopher Laverty 1 Comment 6 Mar ’17 26 Apr ’10 15 Apr ’16

Want to know exactly what a costume designer does? Let Ellen Mirojnick explain it to you. Lord Christopher Laverty 1 Comment 1 Feb ’13 17 Dec ’10 5 Dec ’12

Want to know exactly what a costume designer does? Let Ellen Mirojnick explain it to you. Lord Christopher Laverty 1 Comment 25 Sep ’18 30 Aug ’12 27 Aug ’10

Want to know exactly what a costume designer does? Let Ellen Mirojnick explain it to you. Lord Christopher Laverty 1 Comment 25 Dec ’09 19 Jul ’16 8 Jul ’11

Featuring couture as cool and disaffecting its protagonist, Belle de Jour (1967, directed by Luis Buñuel) has much to say through its ambiguous antiplot narrative and can be read effectively through costume. Catherine Deneuve plays Séverine, a bourgeois housewife unable to commit sexually to her husband Pierre (Jean Sorel). Instead she fulfils her sadomasochistic fantasies by becoming prostitute ‘Belle de jour’ at an intimately run brothel. Every afternoon between two and five Séverine services clients of various persuasions as her eyes are gradually opened to the possibility of sexual satisfaction. Yet the deeper she digs the more her bourgeois existence is threatened. Eventually Séverine quits the brothel and returns to…

MINOR SPOILERS For all the inevitable chrysalis transformation of singer Ally (Lady Gaga) during A Star is Born (2018, directed by Bradley Cooper), the most subtle, yet real sartorial reflection of character belongs to her mentor and lover Jack (Cooper). Costumed by Erin Benach (Drive, A Place Beyond the Pines), Jack is the epitome of the casual rock star. Stage wear, day wear, evening wear, drinking wear, sleeping wear – it’s all the same. His simple clothes mask a mind so damaged it can only be subdued with the bottle. Jack lives in t-shirts (plain, dark or neutral colours), untucked shirts (dark or a green graph-check), brown calf leather jacket,…