Movie Costumes on Display in Los Angeles | Clothes on Film

For those of you lucky enough to live in LA or rich enough to buy a ticket and hop over some time before 30th April, literally racks of costumes have just gone on display at The FIDM Museum, including Mary Zophres’ Oscar nominated ensembles for True Grit. Taxi!

This annual Art of Motion Picture Costume Design exhibition, now in its 19th year, features costumes from 20 films of 2010, including Leonardo DiCaprio as Cobb’s leather jacket and cargo slacks from Inception (designed by Jeffrey Kurland), Jake Gyllenhaal as Dastan’s body armour in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (Penny Rose), Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko’s ‘shark suit’ from Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (Ellen Mirojnick) and Michael Kaplan’s pearl studded and sequin stage wear from Burlesque. Helen Mirren as Prospera’s Elizabethan dress in The Tempest (Sandy Powell, Oscar nominated) is also there.

Among this year’s big draws are the double breasted camel overcoat Colin Firth donned as George VI in The King’s Speech (Jenny Beavan, also Oscar nominated), plus several day dresses and 1930s era vintage coats worn by Helena Bonham Carter as Queen Elizabeth. Jeff Bridges as Rooster Cogburn’s greatcoat from True Grit is perhaps the most exciting addition however, mainly because this particular writer met Mary Zophres recently at the BAFTA Awards and chatted about the film. Matt Damon as LaBoeuf’s peacocky buckskin coat is on display too.

Curator for the FIDM Museum (that’s Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising), Kevin Jones, commented on the expo:

Costumes perform. They’re often the first thing that speak to the audience, before the actor even speaks… they set the time, the place, the economic status. It’s the great power of costumes for film.

This idea is certainly timely with recent BAFTA winner and currently Oscar nominated Coleen Atwood’s elaborate and complex creations for Alice in Wonderland, available to view at the museum. She remarked:

Tim (Burton, director) kept wanting more real things as opposed to just digital things, so I ended up making more and more things and then dealing with the scale, the things that shrank and grew and giant heads and all that. It was all new technology to me, which was really exciting and fun.

For photos of the exhibition, not to mention exclusive interviews with costume designers Mona May (Enchanted), Claire Hannan (The Kids Are All Right), Coleen Atwood and Mary Zophres, among others, visit FrockTalk and promptly wave goodbye to several hours of productivity.

Source: The Canadian Press