Starring: Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Mia Wasikowska Directed by: Tim Burton When it was first announced that Tim Burton planned to direct the latest adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’, most moviegoers were rejoicing as it seemed to be a match made in heaven. Burton’s gothic outlook would likely be used to great effect, knowing too that he would inevitably bring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter into the mix. Indeed what we expected with Burton’s version is what we’ve got. Though this is actually the main problem. The story focuses on 19-year-old Alice (Mia Wasikowska) who is faced with the unhappy prospect of marrying a stuck-up…

Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin bring us the twenties reloaded. We analyse exactly what Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin need to get right for their costume design in The Great Gatsby. Doris Day’s last hurrah for 1950s fashion wearing some of the most exquisite costumes ever seen on screen. Hugo is Scorsese’s monument to wonder and excitement. Here Sandy Powell exclusively explains her costume choices to Clothes on Film. On the eve of Boardwalk Empire: Season 2 commencing, we had a chat with the show’s costume designers John Dunn and Lisa Padovani. A prevalent theme in the first episode of Mildred Pierce starring is how domestic costume can be read…

This is a personal post about designing my custom made James Bond shirt. It is not an advertorial and wasn’t paid for. All photographs are of the final finished shirt(s) and taken by David Wade of Vogue Shot photography. There are now ample custom shirt makers online, but as a pre-existing customer of Deo Veritas what made this company stand out for me was a steadfast, almost stubborn desire to get everything ‘just so’. Seemingly no query or request is too much trouble. Bearing this in mind I tasked Deo Veritas with recreating a shirt I have always sought yet been unable to find off the peg or in my…

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…