Chanel | Clothes on Film

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…

MINOR SPOILERS Okja (2017) is the second film that costume designer Catherine George has worked on with director Bong Joon-ho. Their first together, Snowpiercer (2013), despite being lauded by critics (and featuring Chris Evans), only received a limited theatrcial run in the U.S. and no release at all in the UK. Unlike Okja, Snowpiercer is an out and out sci-fi fantasy set when most of the world’s population have been wiped out and those who remain live on perpetually moving train. Okja is still a fantasy, it revolves around a little girl Mija (An Seo Hyun) trying to save her giant ‘super pig’ from being harvested as GM bacon, but…

There is a problem with the costumes in The Wolf of Wall Street, and it has nothing to do with the film itself but the coverage they have received. Namely, that this coverage is incorrect. Articles such as this one for Vogue France, or this for The Hollywood Reporter, or a ‘suit guide’ by Esquire, concentrate almost solely on Giorgio Armani’s contribution to the project with barely a mention of costume designer Sandy Powell. And this is the Sandy Powell by the way: 10 Oscar nominations and so well respected she has an OBE for services to the industry. It was Powell who costumed The Wolf of Wall Street, not…

Suzy Benzinger, the costume designer of Blue Jasmine, chose iconic brands like Hermès, Louis Vuitton, and Missoni to serve as visual shorthand of what the modern-day wealthy socialite wears, but it is the white Chanel jacket that follows Jasmine from the beginning of the movie to the end which tells its own tale of what is happening to its owner. When we first see Jasmine (Cate Blanchett) she is flying first-class from New York to San Francisco to see her sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins). On the flight she dazzles a fellow passenger with the story of how she met her wealthy businessman husband Hal (Alec Baldwin). Or so she thinks.…

Costume designer Ann Roth’s template for Working Girl (1988, directed by Mike Nichols) is especially astute with regards to the social and geographical make up of its characters. Protagonist Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith) is a homely girl raised and living in Staten Island, New York. Currently working as a secretary in Manhattan (not ‘executive assistant’, reflecting vernacular of the time), as is her best friend Cynthia (Joan Cusack). Tess, however, has gained a degree through night school and harbours ambitions to use it for more constructive tasks than answering the telephone and fetching toilet paper for bawdy stockbrokers. After being set up for a ‘date’ that turned out to be…

Why does Tippi Hedren wear a green suit in The Birds, and what does it mean?

Second and final part of our retrospective of The Grifters with insight from Mark Bridges.

First in our two part retrospective of neo-noir classic The Grifters with exclusive insight from the film’s assistant costume designer Mark Bridges.

Analysing the sometimes tense relationship between fashion and costume design.

Costume designer Jacqueline Durran discusses her unusual approach for Anna Karenina – 1870s Russia via 1950s couture.

Cosmopolis satisfies as everything avant-garde cinema should be; an immaculate journey into weird.

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