flares | Clothes on Film

MILD SPOILERS Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) is far and away the most ‘A New Hope-like’ film in the series yet. In terms of tone, sure, but particularly costume. What costume designers Glyn Dillon and David Crossman have so expertly achieved with Solo is making a contemporary looking movie set during the late 1960s. Star Wars: A New Hope was released in 1977 which puts Solo’s timeline around a decade before, or likely just over. But hang on, isn’t this a science fiction movie? What does when it’s made have to do with the space opera world being brought to life on screen? Well the seventies in particular was…

Or when your costumes look like a building. Odile Dicks-Mireaux’s designs for High Rise (2016) are far more than that. But for a film set in such a heavily stylised world, especially one created by sci-fi author J.G. Ballard, homogeny is everything. In fact homogeny is terrifying. Everything is reflected in the aesthetic. The building towers, Tom Hiddleston’s trouser legs tower, and Luke Evans towers over everyone.  Director Ben Wheatley has claimed that he did not want High Rise to look like a ‘greatest hits of the seventies‘, but really that’s exactly what he’s got, certainly in terms of costume design – and that’s okay. It might not be the…

“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 town of Bethel, New York. The irony was, she wasn’t even there. A further irony follows in that whilst a myriad of psychedelic colours are synonymous with the Woodstock nation, one of the most revered choices of dress, clearly shown in the documentary Woodstock (1970) is a simple white leather fringed lace-up tunic-style vest and bell bottom trousers. It is worn by one of the first female rock stars, the lead singer of Jefferson Airplane,…

Costume designer Jacqueline West talks exclusively to Clothes on Film about her period recreation work on Ben Affleck’s Oscar favourite Argo.

Mark Bridges exclusively explains his costume choices for retro epic Boogie Nights.

Potiche confirms that Catherine Deneuve will always be Belle de Jour, only now with added sense of humour.

A classy, very British affair.

Michael Caine created Jack Carter, yet his immaculate blue mohair suit was more than a little responsible for creating the myth.

Looking so sexy that the finished film can be nothing but a huge disappointment, this teaser for Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy ticks all the right 70’s boxes.

Beautiful and affecting, even if it does collapse under the weight of its own earnestness at times.

Throughout The Way We Were, Barbra Streisand wears a mix of period authenticity and contemporary fashion.

On Meg Ryan’s character Alice, hippie seems like a passing trend rather than a lifestyle choice.