This is the most fun and elaborate outfit Grace Kelly wears in To Catch a Thief. Lord Christopher Laverty 8 Comments 6 Jun ’18 29 Jul ’11 9 Feb ’15

The evolving costumes worn by Sandra Dee in classic sixties gender comedy A Man Answers. Contributor Comments Off on Sandra Dee in If A Man Answers: A Salmon Run Up Beacon Hill 1 Nov ’13 11 Oct ’11 16 Mar ’11

No round up last week because we were a bit busy, so this week is MEGA JAMMED WITH COSTUME GOODNESS. Puttin’ on the Glitz We teamed up with Amber Jane Butchart and The British Library to talk jazz age fashion and dandy gangsters. Further coverage to follow… Costume Test Images 50 of them to be precise, from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes to Star Wars, Batman, and beyond. Noah Mad good interview/article by Tyranny of Style with Noah’s Head Textile Artist Matt Reitsma. There is absolutely no way you can care about costume design and not read this. Business of Fashion Costume designers, fashion designers, studios, brands, and a business venture 100……

Internal Affairs (1990) is an excellent stone cold thriller. The costumes are a subtle tease, revealing personal information that the characters never say out loud. Like many movies released in the late 1980s/1990s, Internal Affairs radiates uneasiness caused by shifting societal attitudes – anything that threatens a straight male chauvinist black-and-white world. Costume designer Rudy Dillon punches through this black-and-white world with ensembles that poke fun at the status quo and subsequently subvert them with eroticism, perhaps ironically using only a colour scheme of black and white. The straight white male chauvinist is Dennis Peck (Richard Gere), a police officer in Los Angeles who controls his colleagues by involving them……

Levi’s® Spring Bottom pants are a most fascinating garment. Introduced in 1889 they are essentially jean trousers intended for Victorian (and later Edwardian) gentlemen. This is the first time Levi’s had focused their products on such an audience. Previously their stock in trade was miners and loggers, but this was a very early attempt by the company to branch out. Spring Bottom pants are a classic item of denim history, yet most folk have probably never heard of them. With this in mind we contacted costume designer Jenny Beavan recently and asked if she would consider putting them in the next Sherlock Holmes film. No-one was paying us to do…

Starring: Tom Cruise, Rebecca De Mornay, Joe Pantoliano Directed By: Paul Brickman Ploddingly paced and dull, Risky Business (1983) is a comedy so devoid of fun as to actually be depressing. Tom Cruise shows star potential, though to assume in 1983 he could mature into one of the most bankable actors on the planet would require a serious leap of faith. He is quietly outshone by co-star Rebecca De Mornay, yet being as her performance is composed and sultry, but as a scheming hooker not even slightly believable, this makes Cruise’s future achievements all the more commendable. Neither actor plays a character easy to warm to. Cruise as high-schooler Joel…

Clothes on Film were fortunate enough to be invited to a display of costumes from the latest adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express (2017), plus interview its costume designer Alexandra Byrne. An Oscar winner for Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2008), and well known for her period design work, since 2011 Byrne has become connected to the world of Marvel, her most recent project being Doctor Strange in 2016. Here she chats candidly about recreating the (mainly) glamorous side of the early 1930s and the challenges that faced her and her team. Alexandra Byrne on shooting in 70 mm: “Director Ken (Branagh) and I did Hamlet (1996) together which was…

Well if this doesn’t look staggering. Set from 1841, via upstate New York to the cotton fields of Louisiana, 12 Years a Slave is the true story of Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free black man kidnapped and sold into slavery. As the title suggests, he remains in this Hell for 12 long years. It’s an agonising subject, especially when not satirised like in Quentin Tarantino’s recent Django Unchained. What jumps out of this trailer are the fabrics…so many beautiful fabrics. Just look at the shirts worn by the plantation slaves: linen, tunic style (as they were), cut full with sleeves blooming from the elbows. The film will be particularly…

Lucinda Wright talks to Clothes on Film about her contribution to The Suspicions of Mr Whicher starring Paddy Considine. For those of you lucky enough to live in LA, literally racks of costumes have just on display at The FIDM Museum.

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……