Blaxploitation | 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…

MILD SPOILERS The hoodie has as much to say about it’s wearer as, say, the white t-shirt does. By which I mean that, depending on context, it can say anything. The white t-shirt can imply clean, erotic, the worker – or a combination of all three. In the eyes of contemporary media, the hoodie largely suggests youth. Shady youth, someone not keen to reveal their identity because they are planning on robbing you or worse. Put the hoodie on a black man and it is pretty much akin to walking down the street in a striped jumper with a sack marked ‘swag’. Luke Cage is not set to change that…

Fred Williamson as Tommy Gibbs adopts the gangster codes of 1930s cinema in blaxploitation classic Black Caesar.

Fabric of Cinema is Clothes on Film editor Chris Laverty’s regular column in design journal Arts Illustrated. Its second issue has recently gone to print covering the subject of activism in art (subtitled ‘Wake up, stand up’). Fitting neatly around this theme from a costume perspective is the movement known as Blaxploitation, the subject of Laverty’s latest column, analysing how young people in America, particularly males, assumed the dress codes of gangsters and outlaws on screen. Was this actually an artistically progressive movement in cinema or ultimately regressive? The following are extracts from the article in question, which can be read in full on pages 94-97 of Arts Illustrated volume…

On the eve of Boardwalk Empire: Season 2 commencing, we had a chat with the show’s costume designers John Dunn and Lisa Padovani.