Let’s get this straight: Peaky Blinders is not Boardwalk Empire. It’s a post World War I gangster drama, during roughly the same time period (1919 as opposed to the early 20’s), it’s gritty, features loyal yet warring brothers, is as cool as ice chips and doesn’t pull any punches. However Boardwalk Empire is set in the attractive seaside landscape of Atlantic City, USA, while Peaky Blinders is set in Birmingham. The whole palette is different too. Boardwalk is colourful and vibrant, Peaky is dark and dingy. Evidently this extends to the clothes. You wouldn’t have got far walking around Birmingham in an orange silk shirt and camel coat; this was…

A fortnight ago to the day, Clothes on Film creator and editor Christopher Laverty joined fashion historian Amber Jane Butchart to give one of two talks and a Q&A chat at The British Library in London. The subjects under discussion were, respectively, the unexpectedly colourful clothing of Prohibition era gangsters as portrayed in the HBO television series Boardwalk Empire, and the influence of movies and movie star style on fashion during The Jazz Age. After Christopher and Amber finished their talks to a delighted audience (they clapped), everyone reconvened to the elegant backdrop of the main library grounds to swig cocktails and dance the night away to Alex Mendham &……

David Lynch has premiered his twelve minute commercial for Lady Dior and it is every bit as ‘Lynch’ as you might expect. Lord Christopher Laverty Comments Off on David Lynch & Marion Cotillard Get Blue For Dior 16 Dec ’11 13 Sep ’11 10 Feb ’20

A rose tinted view of the Roaring Twenties, Sonia Grande’s costume design for Midnight in Paris (2011, directed by Woody Allen) offers everything we expect of the era, e.g. achingly fashionable female trends and the increasing Anglophile influence in male suits, yet does not become bogged down in a precise timeframe. Furthermore as the story segues from past to the present, a non specific retro vibe remains palpable, especially in Rachel McAdams’ loose fitting shirt dresses and Owen Wilson’s nubby tweed jackets. Wilson’s Gil is obviously intended to resemble Woody Allen during his late 1970s heyday, wearing natural waist trousers with brown leather belt, casual shirts and either two or…

If there’s one thing that doesn’t mean much in World War Z, it’s looking presentable. This is costume at its worst, so to speak. Clothes that have been thrown through panes of glass or off the top of buildings, torn, stained and saturated with blood. This is the art of breaking down. Breaking down, distressing, aging, these basically achieve the same result – they make clothes seem more believably lived in, or in the case of World War Z’s zombie hoards, believably dead in. Clothes in movies are broken down by many tried and tested methods. Professional ‘agers’ chisel with files and sandpaper, unpick seams, wash over and over, even…

We chat to costume designer Caroline Eselin-Schaefer about her work on terrific new Amazon comedy, Troop Zero.

Not long now and Oliver Stone’s follow-up to his 1987 smash hit will be on our screens. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps arrives in UK cinemas on 6th October. To celebrate we have four goodie bags to give away. In Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, Michael Douglas returns in his Oscar winning role as Gordon Gekko, disgraced former titan of the financial world. Emerging from a lengthy stint in prison, he must learn to adjust to a new era of corporate greed where the stakes are higher than ever before. Gekko, however, has not lost his touch. As idealistic young banker Jacob (Shia LaBeouf) discovers, Wall Street is about to…

Gwyneth Paltrow is an external rather than internal actress, meaning she has a sponge like ability to soak up characterisation through dress, make up and hair. She is, first and foremost, how she looks. In playing literary prodigy Margot Tenenbaum in The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), Gwyneth adopted a sultry bohemian vibe (apparently based on sixties fashion model Nico) that she was not then remotely known for in real life. Whatever emotional connection she brought to the part, her performance was defined by her clothes. “As soon as I knew I was wearing the little Lacoste dresses and loafers and a fur coat, I said to myself, okay, I get it.…

Following the success of one-off Victorian drama The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, aka The Murder at Road Hill House, shown on British television in 2011, a follow up was commissioned. Again it stars Paddy Considine as the title character and again it’s based on a book by Kate Summerscale, but unlike the infamous story of Constance Kent, The Murder in Angel Lane is entirely fictitious. Angel Lane is set several years after the 1860 case that ruined Jack Whicher’s career in the Police force. Whicher is now working as an occasional private detective and living in modest, if not squalid conditions. He is a different character now, a paranoid, broken…

MILD SPOILERS Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) is far and away the most ‘A New Hope-like’ film in the series yet. In terms of tone, sure, but particularly costume. What costume designers Glyn Dillon and David Crossman have so expertly achieved with Solo is making a contemporary looking movie set during the late 1960s. Star Wars: A New Hope was released in 1977 which puts Solo’s timeline around a decade before, or likely just over. But hang on, isn’t this a science fiction movie? What does when it’s made have to do with the space opera world being brought to life on screen? Well the seventies in particular was…