There is not man behind the mask; the mask is The Lone Ranger. Lord Christopher Laverty 1 Comment 26 Apr ’18 1 Feb ’13 14 Jul ’11

Click HERE to see the rest of the images at Ain’t it Cool It’s those Captain America costume pics! Later than everyone else! The images in question are computer generated concept art so hardly set in stone, though being as they strongly resemble JoBlo’s firsthand description of the CA costume last week (read it HERE) it is likely Chris Evans will be wearing something very similar in the movie titled Captain America: The First Avenger. His suit is apparently made from a leather type material. It certainly retrains retro touches of the traditional Captain America look, e.g. colouring, skullcap headgear and utility belt. Although how many of these touches will…

Catch up with the week in costume design. Julien’s Hollywood Icons and Idols sale draws high bids for famous costumes, but not the big numbers seen last year at the Debbie Reynolds auction. $ 4,600,000 for Marilyn Monroe’s ‘subway’ dress was only just one mega bid of many.

How Richard Burton’s character in Villain (1971) dresses to impress and intimidate. Fred Williamson as Tommy Gibbs adopts the gangster codes of 1930s cinema in blaxploitation classic Black Caesar. The glossy costume world of gangster squad is faithful to history, but not a slave to it. $ 4,600,000 for Marilyn Monroe’s ‘subway’ dress was only just one mega bid of many. The full trailer for HBO’s Boardwalk Empire arrives. Period costume fans, set your jaw to dropped.

This week we published Bonnie Radcliffe’s excellent article about the costume design clues in No Country for Old Men (2007), including a breakdown of psychotic hit man Anton Chigurh’s (Javier Bardem) sparse but never black attire among a sea of check shirts and cowboy hats. Chigurh stands out as much as he needs to (note the snakeskin boots) but really he dresses to fit in. Like all the best villains he is not aware he is the bad guy; to Chigurh he is just doing a job. So in honour of Chigurh’s distinctive western jacket and polyester trousers, we have a round up of some of the best villain related…

Disregarding how redundant it may seem to be remaking director Niels Arden Oplev’s excellent Swedish adaptation of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2009) for a moment, this four minute trailer for David Fincher’s stab at book one in novelist Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy is pretty special. For the first time we experience Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander speaking (broad accent) and properly moving (sometimes fighting) in her costume. Early indications are that Mara might just pull this off. If you already know the story of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, maybe because you have read the book or seen the original film, there is little point in recapping…

For this month’s Fabric of Cinema column in pan-India publication Arts Illustrated, Clothes on Film editor Christopher Laverty discussed the game changing costume design work of Trish Summerville. This makes that terrible title pun you’ve just read almost acceptable. The theme of the issue was women, specifically women approaching their role in society with a powerful, fresh perspective. This is sex rather than gender based, as none of the women featured conform to pre-established definitions of masculine or feminine. They are creatives achieving wonderful things not because of their sex, or in spite of it, but because of raw, unabashed talent. Costume designer Trish Summerville is this month’s Arts Illustrated……

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. Streisand was up for Best Actress for her movie debut in Funny Girl and was established as something of an ‘individual’; usually described as ‘kooky’, she was completely different from anyone else, an innovator of style, and challenging and changing the ideas of beauty. So it is no surprise that when it came to her clothing choice for the Oscars, Streisand resisted the usual protocol of an evening gown and instead opted for a most……

In the very opening scene of Rocky (1976, costume designer Robert Cambel), we see the title character in the ring, bare chested, hands encased in boxing gloves, the picture of sporting violence and masculinity. But this is no more than a surface assumption. Not two minutes later, we see Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) shrug on his faded brown towelling dressing gown, with “The Italian Stallion” embroidered on the back, and things start to shift. This is not a macho film concerned with the fight alone, but an exploration of masculinity in all its guises – the assumptions, the pretence and the reality. Clothes play an important part in this, both……

Clothes on Film talks exclusively to Anna Sheppard about her work on Captain America: The First Avenger, covering sartorial recreation of 1940s wartime, development of a superhero costume and the difficulties of working from someone else’s original designs. Anna B. Sheppard is one of the best known and respected costume designers in the business. Based in London but working internationally, she has created costumes for directors Steven Spielberg, Michael Mann and Quentin Tarantino, plus been Academy Award nominated twice, for Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (1993) and The Pianist (2002). Captain America is something of a departure for Sheppard as she is effectively working from a 70 year old design template. The…