Sigourney Weaver | Clothes on Film

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…

Thanks at least in part to the wintry weather, this week’s costume round up is coats on film.

Costume in The Cabin in the Woods is not grand, but it is very clever. All the teenage characters subtly evolve from one horror stereotype to another.

A real legend of the industry, costume designer Theoni V. Aldredge, has died.

Part 2 of our examination into how the Alien films have used costume design to contextualise primal terror.

In the first of a two-part special, we examine how important costumes from the Alien films are in contextualising primal terror.