Margot Robbie | Clothes on Film

Contributor Birdie McAra explores the fantabulously non-male gazey world of Birds of Prey.

The leggy lure of Bombshell.

A brief video dip into the costume design of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

SPOILERS Despite all the hoo-ha over films such as Blue Jasmine and Stoker contemporary is still pretty much overlooked as a form of costume design. If it’s invisible, well, nobody notices it, and if it’s designer it becomes all about ‘the fashion’ (OMG TOTES WANT THOSE SHOES). We are currently in an age when costume design means period and sci-fi. It comes to the extent that if a costumer wants to tell a story through contemporary attire, he/she needs either a director with a key grasp of semiotics, or one that doesn’t care less about semiotics and offers a degree of autonomy. Watching About Time we presume that Richard Curtis…

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…