colour | Clothes on Film

SPOILERS THROUGHOUT Having recently finished a six week, six episode run on the BBC, John le Carré adapted spy drama The Little Drummer Girl was divisive in terms of audience reaction. Some found the plot impossible to follow, others revelled in the cloak and dagger shenanigans of twenty-something Charmain ‘Charlie’ Ross (Florence Pugh), a low level actress drawn into a high stakes mission of infiltrating a Palestinian revolutionary group in 1979. The show’s costume design by Sheena Napier and Stephen Noble inspired equal division. While most enjoyed the eye-popping period ensembles and how they exemplified character, just as many were left confounded by their conspicuous presence. One thing that cannot…

Author Caroline Young has just released a fascinating new book entitled Hitchcock’s Heroines (published by Insight Editions). It celebrates and studies the women in Hitchcock movies; their influence, semblance and iconography. What’s more, Young also examines the role costume design plays with these women, both the characters and the actresses who played them, and how they can be interpreted as far more than just ‘icy blondes’. Here we have an extract of the book exclusively for Clothes on Film: Kim Novak’s grey suit the colour of San Francisco fog in Vertigo, Grace Kelly as the too-perfect woman in Rear Window, and Janet Leigh’s black and white sets of underwear to…

Locke (2013, costume design by Nigel Egerton) is a film unique in its restrictions – it takes place in real time, has only one character and only one setting. Ivan Locke (Tom Hardy) is driving somewhere important, and over the course of the film’s 85 minute running time, his life gradually begins to crumble around him as he desperately tries to salvage it. The controlled environment – the inside of his car – and the fact that the only character we actually see is Ivan himself means that interest in him is the only way of maintaining an audience’s attention with such limited visual stimulation. Ivan is the only character…

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 the Recchi family, as selected by costumer Antonella Cannarozzi, are generally minimalist, in plain colours with little embellishment. I am Love is actually set in Europe around 2000, but its central characters are trapped as the well-heeled repressed of the sixties. Just as sexual, artistic and cultural expression was blossoming, the old guard struggled to make sense of this new world so regressed even more vehemently into their old one. The Recchi’s seem to live…

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,…

Director Brian De Palma has made movies heavily influenced by Alfred Hitchcock before, but Passion (2012) is the first one whose characters look like they stepped out of one of Hitchcock’s classic films. Karen Muller-Serreau’s bold and colourful costumes communicate the characters’ hidden desires and make watching Passion a sensory experience. This melodrama centres on two ad executives, Isabelle (Noomi Rapace) and her boss Christine (Rachel McAdams), who have a deadline to come up with an ad campaign for a new smartphone. In her sleep, Isabelle thinks of a great idea. The two other principal characters are Isabelle’s assistant Dani (Karoline Herfurth) and Christine’s boyfriend Dirk (Paul Anderson) who get…

The near future romance Her, written and directed by Spike Jonze, whose widely diverse resume ranges from the world of music videos to MTV’s Jackass to major motion pictures, brought together a creative team that costume designer Casey Storm refers to as “friends first, and co-workers second.” Storm and production designer K.K. Barrett create a soft, comfortable world of tomorrow. Shot on location around Los Angeles and Shanghai, Barrett avoided familiar locations to create a world that is accessible but not overtly recognisable. Our first introduction to the world feels very familiar. Seated in an office in a simple button up, Joaquin Phoenix’s character, Theodore Twombly, dictates a letter to…

Here is a brief extract from editor Chris Laverty’s third ‘Fabric of Cinema’ column for international periodical Arts Illustrated. The main reason for a plug is the subject matter discussed: colour, without doubt one of the most fascinating aspects of theoretical costume study. Colour is so open to interpretation that any occasion costume designers dare to use it with intentional meaning constitutes a brave move. One of the finest costume events of the year so far, Stoker, provides just such an example. Costumers Kurt and Bart deliberately incorporated colour as a form of expression to be read alongside the film’s similarly intentional production design. A preview of the Arts Illustrated…

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…

Costume designer Michael Kaplan reminisces with Clothes on Film about creating dark tourist Marla Singer in Fight Club.

Oz is here and as far as fantasy costume is concerned, you are in for some surprises.

Les Misérables is drenched in costume symbolism, specifically revolutionary red, white and blue. Subtle was never its intention.