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

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

Kelsey Osgood examines the religious and cultural significance of costume design in 2012 Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film, A Separation (directed by Asghar Farhadi). Perhaps for many observers, particularly those who live in liberal Western cultures, the concept of Arab and Persian religious uniform is symbolised by the simplicity of the black burqa. The pious pare down their clothing to the least colourful and individualizing garments in order to humble themselves before their God. As generally decreed by feminist scholars, women in religiously observant societies are those most affected by sartorial limits. But like most practices viewed as wholly restrictive, the rules of modest dress for religious women…

Director Martin Scorsese once again teams up with regular collaborator Sandy Powell for The Wolf of Wall Street. This first trailer lays the costume ground rules: expensive bad taste and lots of it. The Wolf of Wall Street is based on the memoirs of New York stockbroker Jordan Belfort (played by Leonardo DiCaprio), tracing his involvement in a large securities fraud case and refusal to cooperate with the FBI. This all occurred during the 1990s boom and if the trailer is anything to go by, predominantly at the beginning of that stylistically redundant decade. Oscar winning costume designer Sandy Powell has gone to town with what looks to be her…

Watch the trailer HERE Despite languishing in unreleased hell for a year in the U.S. and not even having an official distributor here in the UK, we thought we’d show you this trailer for Middle Men (made in 2009, directed by George Gallo) because it brings to light the difficult task of recent period costume design. The period in question is 1995. The story of this ‘based on true events’ comedy concerns nothing less than the birth of chargeable internet pornography. Wayne Beering (Giovanni Ribisi) and Buck Dolby (Gabriel Macht) are two horny lady lovers with the idea of creating the first online billing service for adult entertainment. They meet…

Right, sit comfortably with a cocktail (we encourage that here) because this is an excellent competition with an excellent prize: we have five copies of Liz Gregory’s new movie dressmaking book ‘Sew Iconic’ to give away to five lucky winners, just for answering an easy peasy question. Sew Iconic is an innovative book that walks the reader through making their own copies of famous dresses from movies. Ten costumes are covered, including Marilyn Monroe’s halterneck from The Seven Year Itch (1959) by William Travilla, Jennifer Grey’s pink cocktail dress by Hilary Rosenfeld from Dirty Dancing (1987), Audrey Hepburn’s Givenchy LBD from Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) and Keira Knightley’s cripplingly complex…

This week’s costume design news. Mad Men “She buys her clothes two sizes too small, more 50’s than 60’s.” – Janie Bryant knows her Joan. Yves Saint Laurent Costume designer Madeline Fontaine’s predictably difficult job costuming the immaculate biopic. …and sticking with Yves, HERE‘s Kate Muir’s article inspired by the film for The Times featuring Clothes on Film ed Christopher Laverty. Sunday in New York Another stunning analysis by Kay Noske, this time focusing on Jane Fonda’s enviable wardrobe as ’the only 22 year old virgin left in the world’. Hannibal Part 2 of Hello Tailor’s in-depth analysis. Even if you can’t be bothered to read the article (though you……

A brief video dip into the costume design of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. “We are stardust, we are golden”, sang Joni Mitchell of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, held August 15-18th 1969, at a dairy farm in the Catskills near the hamlet of White Lake in the town of Bethel, New York. The irony was, she wasn’t even there. A further irony follows in that whilst a myriad of psychedelic colours are synonymous with the Woodstock nation, one of the most revered choices of dress, clearly shown in the documentary Woodstock (1970) is a simple white leather fringed lace-up tunic-style vest and bell bottom trousers. It is…

Gloria is more presence, more ‘sensation’ than woman, attests Sara Bivigou. On a blazingly hot New York City day she appears suddenly. Dressed in a floor length beige raincoat and what looks to be pale pink pyjamas, she looks both of the moment and as though she has just woken up. This is because Gloria keeps a mood and pace all of her own, carries time around her neck, wears it in the form of a gold pocket watch necklace. Gloria is the story of a gangster’s ex-girlfriend who goes on the run with Phil (John Adames), a seven year old boy, after his family have been killed by mobsters.…

What young girl doesn’t want to be in the ‘Pink Ladies’ after seeing Grease (1978)? They are synonymous by their satin-lined powder pink baseball-style jacket, ‘Pink Ladies’ embroidered in black scrawl on the reverse, their name on the front, worn mostly with the collar up for that rebellious touch. Celebrating impurity, they are one of the most popular and imitated girl gangs on screen. Being ‘pink’ is a sarcastic and perhaps sexual allusion. Specialist websites suggest for a Pink Lady we need their jacket and a poodle skirt, but what do the girls really wear and why? Rizzo, the Pink Ladies’ leader, is studied HERE, with this article focusing on…