Why does Tippi Hedren wear a green suit in The Birds, and what does it mean? Costume designer Jacqueline Durran discusses her unusual approach for Anna Karenina – 1870s Russia via 1950s couture. Deborah Nadoolman Landis discusses her Hollywood Costume exhibition at the V&A. Forgive the self-promotion as we draw your attention to Clothes on Film’s inclusion in book ‘Hollywood Costume’ edited by Deborah Nadoolman Landis. A rundown of why Hollywood Costume at the V&A is the best event you will see all year. Costume designer Lindy Hemming chats exclusively to Clothes on Film about her contribution to Designing 007: Fifty Years of Bond Style. Hollywood costume comes to London’s…

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.

From stills of this film alone you could easily be forgiven in thinking that I am Love (Io sono l’amore, 2009) was set during the 1960s. The designer clothes draped worn by lead members of the Recchi family, as selected by costumer Antonella Cannarozzi, are generally minimalist, in plain colours with little embellishment. I am Love is actually set in Europe around 2000, but its central characters are trapped as the well-heeled repressed of the sixties. Just as sexual, artistic and cultural expression was blossoming, the old guard struggled to make sense of this new world so regressed even more vehemently into their old one. The Recchi’s seem to live……

Starring: Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Marion Cotillard Directed by: Michael Mann Public Enemies is polished movie Depression, but it is also authentic. Graham Thompson, the Chicago based hat maker who produced 75 custom hats for the movie (fedoras mainly, boaters and tribys) concurs that they ‘got it right’. Costume designer Colleen Atwood’s painstaking recreations of heavy wool pinstriped suits and silken evening dresses are certainly all up there on screen. Also the meticulous way the outfits are worn: just enough shirt cuff protruding from the suit jacket, hats cocked at just that perfect angle, coats ringed with fur and not swamped by it. These outfits set an atmospheric tone for…

A brief glimpse at the costume world Mark Bridges created for Joker. SPOILERS If you’ve heard anything about Phantom Thread (2017, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson), you are bound to uncover a multitude of thoughts on the astounding Academy Award winning costume work of Mark Bridges or the retirement role of Daniel Day-Lewis as Reynolds Woodcock, 1950s fashion house couturier. But one of the key components to Reynolds is missing from the discussion: Autism. Phantom Thread opens with Reynolds (Day-Lewis) getting dressed to formalities of the era. Polished shoes, ironed trousers, a fresh button-down shirt, with the addition of long magenta socks to introduce the notion of creativity, or perhaps…

In 1935, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers made cinema history with their most successful film partnership, Top Hat. However, it wasn’t Astaire’s headgear that got people talking; it was Rogers’ ostrich feather dress worn in the Oscar-nominated song ‘Cheek to Cheek’. The fact remains that this is quite possibly the most memorable, beautiful and romantic musical number ever captured on film, and Rogers’ dress contributes to this greatly. Whenever Astaire and Rogers dance, they are making love without undressing, without even kissing in the majority of their films; “they is angels” remarks unfairly condemned criminal Kofi as he fulfils his dying wish of watching the lovers perform ‘Cheek to Cheek’…

When you are costuming the biggest franchise release of the year and creating a capsule range to run alongside it for a major online retailer, it is clear a normal approach to the task is not going to work. Ex-stylist and one time assistant for Michael Kaplan, Trish Summerville, one of the fastest rising names in the industry, has purposely sought out what many costume designers shy away from: co-collaborations with new and established fashion designers and, in several cases, pulling clothes directly from the runway. Summerville is smart and savvy with a feel for contemporary trends, though by not designing and making key items for The Hunger Games: Catching……

WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS FROM THE OUTSET All the main characters in director/screenwriter Shane Black’s brave and exciting Iron Man 3 wear a suit. By his own admission, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is “cocooned” in his. He retreats inside the Iron Man suit, now up to an almost unfathomably expensive Mark 42, because it is the only place he feels safe. Those around Stark, be they on the side of right or wrong, wear their own suit. The suit hides their true self and it is only by removing this disguise that they can reveal it. Iron Man 3 mocks the notion of re-invention; Stark can build all the iron…

Clothes on Film talks exclusively to Anna Sheppard about her work on Captain America: The First Avenger, covering sartorial recreation of 1940s wartime, development of a superhero costume and the difficulties of working from someone else’s original designs. Anna B. Sheppard is one of the best known and respected costume designers in the business. Based in London but working internationally, she has created costumes for directors Steven Spielberg, Michael Mann and Quentin Tarantino, plus been Academy Award nominated twice, for Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (1993) and The Pianist (2002). Captain America is something of a departure for Sheppard as she is effectively working from a 70 year old design template. The…

Starring: Kristen Stewart, Dakota Fanning, Michael Shannon Director: Floria Sigismondi 1975. Rock is a male-dominated genre, but young wannabe guitarist Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart) has other ideas. She wants to start an all girl rock band called ‘The Runaways’. And that basically is the set-up of this conventional, yet hugely entertaining music biopic of the real life rebellious rock ensemble. With their band, The Runaways kicked started the term ‘Girl Power’, i.e. youth female liberation, which was resurrected in the 1990s by the Spice Girls. Throughout this story we are reminded that women weren’t given the freedom afforded men in the music business. They were treated like sex objects, not…