Chances are you have not seen Snowpiercer yet due to its limited availability and release fiasco. If so, skip this interview and watch the film first. Go in clean, because Snowpiercer really is as good as everyone’s telling you. Based on the French graphic novel Le Transperceneige, it is essentially a dark (often literally) sci-fi thriller about a perpetual motion train carrying the last remnants of society after a global ice age. Themes of cruelty, disparity and sacrifice abound, and strong, sometimes horrific visual references bombard the screen. The exceptional costume design by Catherine George ties all this together in a way that is readable and indicative, yet never threatens……

There are already a lot of excellent interviews with Oscar winning Beauty and the Beast costume designer Jacqueline Durran online, so with our limited communication we wanted to ask a little more about Belle’s (Emma Watson) day-to-day ensemble and the creation of Gaston’s attire (Luke Evans), arguably the closest character to his 1991 animated counterpart. Ms. Durran, currently hard at work on a new project, was kind enough to provide a few brief responses: Clothes on Film: How did you go about creating costumes for a computer generated Beast? Jacqueline Durran: When I first started prep on the movie the Beast was going to be a prosthetic beast. Had this……

Moments of sartorial significance, and that glimmer of recognition that we feel upon seeing an onscreen outfit worn more than once are found throughout Smooth Talk, Joyce Chopra’s underseen 1986 adaptation of a Joyce Carol Oates short story. The film is rife with all the monotony of life and charming ensembles we expect of a teenage girl in the summer, yet it simultaneously offers complexity and creepiness. Laura Dern plays Connie, an ingénue spending her days as an “unfinished girl, waiting for completion of some sort” (Quart 74). In her essay, “Smoothing Out the Rough Spots: The Film Adaptation of ‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’” Rebecca Sumner…

Check out the trailer HERE Hollywood starlet Christina Ricci has featured in a short film for The Donna Karan Company called Four Play. It is all to promote their Eldridge handbag. Christina Ricci, now 29 for all of you old enough to remember her turn in The Addams Family (1991), joins the likes of Marion Cotillard for Dior and Robert De Niro for Chanel (well, Martin Scorsese apparently directing, but wouldn’t that be fun?) in making narrative films to advertise designer wares. This is opposed to the usual, an A-lister wearing exclusive togs and swanning around some po-mo or CGI fantasy backdrop with a bottle of fragrance nearby and posing.…

In honour of the The Wolverine and his black on black Yakuza uniform, a round up of posts featuring memorable black costumes at Clothes on Film. Speaking exclusively to Clothes on Film, Le Divorce costume designer Carol Ramsey explains how a Hermès Kelly can be elevated from status symbol to character. The Girl Most Likely To is a film for all those who have been laughed at because of the way they look. The Fortune is as pleasing to the eye as it is funny. Smart and loose casual elegance with a lot of silk and herringbone.

When Arnold Scaasi opened his couture salon in 1964, he soon became a couturier to the stars. He was already a favoured designer for Barbra Streisand when he famously dressed her for the 1969 Oscars. Streisand was up for Best Actress for her movie debut in Funny Girl and was established as something of an ‘individual’; usually described as ‘kooky’, she was completely different from anyone else, an innovator of style, and challenging and changing the ideas of beauty. So it is no surprise that when it came to her clothing choice for the Oscars, Streisand resisted the usual protocol of an evening gown and instead opted for a most…

If you have played The Last of Us on Playstation 3 it has likely ruined video gaming for you. The world created is so vivid and believable that every game afterward just feels dated and empty. Throughout, The Last of Us is unwaveringly real, full of seemingly inconsequential details such as every weapon or object you carry being attached or able to fit into your character’s backpack. Contrast this with Grand Theft Auto V where a rocket launcher appears out of your trouser pocket and it’s clear that if game developers really want to create a living, breathing parallel to reality they need to treat it as reality – no…

Our first Dual Analysis with Costumer’s Guide. To kick off, here is what Chris from Clothes on Film had to say.

The 1970s are a scary decade because everything appears the same on the surface, cars, clothes, technology, so we can relate to what we see, yet somehow it has an otherworldly atmosphere. At times the seventies can seem like a strange, beige parallel universe where cholesterol was for sissies and sideburns mandatory (less so for women). With its most recent trailer The Conjuring, set in 1971, embraces this idea wholeheartedly. Warner Bros. are pushing The Conjuring hard – and with good reason. It is directed by James Wan who made the original Saw (2004) and even more impressively Insidious, which was officially the most profitable movie of 2011. If this…

His Girl Friday (1940) is an old fashioned comedy with old fashioned dialogue. It thunders along like a washing machine on spin cycle, much like its central protagonist, Rosalind Russell as ace reporter Hildy Johnson (not first choice for casting by director Howard Hawks, but she earned her stripes so to speak). Russell is a hoot as she bounds back and forth between her boss and ex-husband Walter Burns (Cary Grant), soon to be new husband Bruce Baldwin (Ralph Bellamy) and key to her big scoop, patsy murderer Earl Williams (John Qualen). Hildy is tenacious and classy, although – and quite charmingly so – she is not graceful. Robert Kalloch…