The latest MCU smash-hit, Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019), features one of the strangest villains in the wallcrawler’s rogues’ gallery. When it comes to movies based on comic books, the outfit a character like Mysterio wears is not supposed to work on-screen. On the printed pages of comics, the outfits can be impractical and outlandish, and nothing is more of those things than the villain’s fishbowl helmet, lavender cape fastened with giant eyes, and green, scaly tights. Still, costume designer for the film, Anna B. Sheppard, met the challenge of making a fantastic look for Jake Gyllenhaal’s villain. Instead of running away from the crazy roots of the character, she……

Where to start with Penny Rose? Pirates of the Caribbean? Evita? King Arthur? Most recently of course 47 Ronin (directed by Carl Rinsch). You do not hire Penny Rose for something small. This is not to say she won’t work on independent and low budget projects, just that her CV is becoming increasingly packed with huge scale period and/or fantasy studio movies – basically the kind of pictures that would make most costume designers weep. Multiples, armour, uniforms, plus Ms. Rose practically always builds from scratch. Not a fan of ‘shopping’ or even slightly interested in fashion, Penny Rose is old-school hands on, no-nonsense and no fear. Nonetheless, there is……

This is the most fun and elaborate outfit Grace Kelly wears in To Catch a Thief. Lord Christopher Laverty 8 Comments 19 Aug ’09 2 Mar ’11 25 Jul ’11

A brief video dip into the costume design of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Fabrics jump out of the screen in this trailer for 12 Years a Slave. Django Unchained costume designer Sharen Davis exclusively explains her work on the film. Costume designer Sharen Davis finds a good fit with Tarantino; their Deep South bounty hunter Django is a visibly memorable protagonist crying out for a sequel. Could Django Unchained be the first Quentin Tarantino movie to win a Costume Design Oscar? Not the only book you should buy about costume design, but probably the best. Betsy Heimann chats exclusively about one of the most iconic costumes of the…

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,……

This is the most fun and elaborate outfit Grace Kelly wears in To Catch a Thief. Lord Christopher Laverty 8 Comments 26 Aug ’11 23 Jun ’09 21 Sep ’10

This is the most fun and elaborate outfit Grace Kelly wears in To Catch a Thief. Lord Christopher Laverty 8 Comments 23 Jun ’09 27 Feb ’15 4 May ’16

This coral pink ensemble encompasses and challenges the absolute femininity of Grace Kelly. Lord Christopher Laverty 5 Comments 4 Jan ’11 19 Aug ’09 16 May ’11 This is the most fun and elaborate outfit Grace Kelly wears in To Catch a Thief. Lord Christopher Laverty 8 Comments 4 Jan ’11 19 Aug ’09 9 Dec ’14

“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,…

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……