I stayed up late tonight because I was absorbed in the movie "Cracks." I found it engrossing - though highly disturbing - but the best part was that it was visually stunning. I would watch it just for the fashion alone. I thought I'd share some of my favorite screen caps because I'm too tired to write out an ode to the costume designer, even though she/he deserves it.
Well, I'm back from Toronto! Having arrived late last night after a fantastic trip, I've spent the day doing some boring necessities and getting back in the swing of things. As promised, I did make some fun purchases on my trip, but those will have to wait to be shared. Instead, I want to share the remarkable costumes found in Sweeney Todd.
Colleen Atwood was in charge of that particular aspect of the movie, and she did a fantastic job. Of course, since she has designed for Edward Scissorhands, Chicago, and Memoirs of a Geisha, one would expect no less. She especially outdid herself in the scene where Mrs. Lovett, the pie-maker, fantasizes about a life with Sweeney by the sea. It honestly made me gasp in delight and awe!
See how marvelous? That color pallette! Those stripes! Those polkadots and wild hair! I'm not gonna lie - I, too, would love to live on the beach with Johnny Depp and wear fabulous outfits. It's pretty much a given.
I also, of course, adored the darker clothing found in the rest of the movie. Mrs. Lovett's looks were my favorites.
Said Colleen Atwood, "She was somebody who almost was like a crow. She was always picking a bit of this or that up. Everyone is a little grimy in the movie. As she got more money, she got a couple of new dresses. I used a lot of authentic fabrics. Her dresses were a range of color but subtle and controlled. There was always a hint of red peeking out, but very low-key. A lot of her stuff had a sheen or beading. I thought she'd be attracted to a bit of obvious glitter. Underneath she had fantastic underwear you never see — great bloomers and corsets. As for the fingerless gloves — people wore them in the period. They'd been around."
Sweeney Todd's outfits were also quite memorable - sort of a mixture of Edward Scissorhands and Stacy of What Not To Wear (okay, at least the hair reminded me of her.)
Colleen also had some good things to say about Sweeney's look: "He comes off a boat, crusted with salt. He's been through a terrifying time in prison, and he's hardened to life. He enters the world with a shell on, like an insect shell. His jacket has a sheen. As he starts barbering, he becomes part of the world he's living in, a world where people use recycled clothing. (The) jacket he wears to work was influenced by work wear of the period. I really felt he needed some heavy weight to his feet, like he was dragging weight, and his boots are quite heavy and have nails around the outside of the sole on top. You get a kick of silver when he hits the pedal on the barber chair. His costumes are simple. He's not conscious of what he's wearing. "
The costumes were apparently taken from different parts of the Victorian period, with more concern for the characters than historical integrity. Many may describe the look as Goth, but Colleen said,"to me, the influence was the makeup and styling of the old black-and-white movies. The lips and eyes are dark, and the face is light. That's the feeling we were going for, more than a conscious goth look."
For more information on the Oscar-nominated Sweeney Todd costumes, check out some of my sources for this article. There's a great interview in USA Today, as well as some really fantastic videos (Parts 1; 2) about it on YouTube. As always, The Costumer's Guide had some good pictures.
P.S. Doesn't the first big photo in this editorial (the one with the stripey tights) look freakishly like a costume for Mrs. Lovett? Also, it just occurred to me that the red-and-white striped dress from the fantasy sequence reminds me a lot of Mary Poppins' costume at the fair in the chalk drawing. It makes sense, I suppose, seeing as both costumes appear in Victorian era fantasy scenes. . .
"To Vivien dressing was almost a religion, a ritual. On rainy days when everybody wore mousy or moth-eaten clothes she came out in a shining and vivid raincoat. She dressed in defiance of the elements rather than in submission to them. Anita could see that her dressing was almost a provocation to calmer inhabitants; things were bound to happen to Vivien, different things than happened to most women, she was always so dressed for it, for the unexpected, the adventurous. Her dressing roused in people an uneasiness similar to the feeling they had when looking over trip literature and pamphlets, a kind of wanderlust, a desire to flee from the familiar and the conventional. Whatever the stage possessed that enslaved the imagination Vivien had applied to her daily life. Between her setting and costume, and the homes of other women and their costume lay a pit as wide as the orchestra pit in the theatre, and spotlights such as she directed on herself found her audaciously keyed up, as they found the professional actress."
- Anais Nin, "The Slippery Floor," Waste of Timelessness and Other Early Stories
I always come up with my Halloween costumes at the last minute. Sometimes they are really great, like that year I was a Munchkin, or the year I was a French chef, or even my Ninja costume last year, and sometimes they are beyond horrible, like my year as a fortune teller. If you've left off your Halloween costume to the last minute, here are a few ideas to keep your costumes unique and fantastic:
♥ braids + flowers + drawn-on unibrow = Frida Kahlo
♥ Striped shirt + matching hat + skinny jeans = Where's Waldo?
♥ Stripey socks + hearts drawn on cheeks + cute colored dress = Fafinette (Such a good idea, nitrolicious!)
♥ Black boots + black tux (or some sort of black pants/jacket combo) + powdered hair + fingerless gloves + black sunnies = Karl Lagerfeld
I had a bunch of good costume ideas, but now I'm blanking. I'll add to the list if I think of more. I'm going as a futuristic fairy, I think, if that gives you an idea. (silver leggings + floaty dress + wings = futuristic fairy)
That post I did on the costumes in Pride & Prejudice got me interested in costume design in other movies. And of course, the first movie that popped into my head was Marie Antoinette. I found this amazing website about the costumes and costume design in the movie.
Highlights include:
Design sketches by costume designer Milena Canonero:
(Check out this interview to hear what Canonero had to say about the design process.)
Pictures from the Vogue shoot by Annie Liebovitz:
Close-ups of the fabulous shoes Manolo Blahnik designed for the movie:
This ended up being my favorite part of the website. Blahnik talked about designing the shoes, saying, "When the producers called, I dropped everything. When I was a boy, my mother read a Marie-Antoinette biography, and I have read Antonia Fraser's version. I can't wait to see it. They said 'make them sexy', but I wanted to do something very academic." He researched the original 18th century shoes before making these beauties.
Aaah, to be a young queen with beautiful clothes and shoes....
Having just watched the Madonna documentary Madonna: Truth or Dare before looking at all the beautiful costumes, I've had kind of an overload of fabulousness. Must go to bed.
Today I watched the newest version of Pride & Prejudice. For about the millionth time, might I add. I always enjoy the clothing - the empire waists, the long skirts, the ribbons. Keira Knightly's coats (left) are the items that I always specifically envy. They're long and flowy and wonderful, and if I had one, I would wear it all the time. And of course, I always appreciate the beauty of the pearl-studded hairstyle on the right. I will not let the fact that my brother, while passing through the room where I was watching tv, said, "What's that in her hair? Dandruff?" deter me. (Oh come on, it does not look like dandruff!)
I found an interview with Jacqueline Durran, the costume designer for the movie, which you can read here. I wish the interview got into more detail, but it was interesting to learn a bit about what was going on behind the beautiful wardrobes. For, example, "most film versions of the book were set in and around 1815. The director decided that this version would be set in 1796/7, so we were talking about a different era of fashion." Hmm. It never even occurred to me to think about that. I found a better interview here that delved a little deeper into Durran's mind. My favorite questions/answers were:
"How did you differentiate between the five sisters, costume-wise?
Lizzie Bennet was the tomboy, and wore earth colours because she loved the countryside. Jane was the most refined, and yet it's still all a bit slapdash and homemade, because the Bennets have no money. One of the main things Joe wanted was for the whole thing to have a provincial feel. Mary is the bluestocking: serious and practical. And then Lydia and Kitty are a bit Tweedledum and Tweedledee in a kind of teenage way. I tried to make it so that they'd be sort of mirror images. If one's wearing a green dress, the other will wear a green jacket; so you always have a visual asymmetry between the two.
And Darcy?
His costume had a series of stages. The first time we see him he's at Meriton, where he has a very stiffly tailored jacket on, and he's quite contained and rigid. He stays in that rigid form for the first part of the film. By the time we get to the proposal that goes wrong in the rain, we move to a similar cut, but a much softer fabric. And then later he's got a completely different cut of coat, not interlined, and he wears it undone. The nth degree is him walking through the mist in the morning, completely undressed by 18th-century standards. It's absolutely unlikely, but then Lizzie's in her nightie, so what can you say?"
Interesting stuff, no?
Oh dear. I have a sudden desire to go to a ball and find my Mr. Darcy.
If you haven't read Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden, then you should pick it up immediately. The movie is excellent, and the book is even better. When reading it, I'm always struck by the fact that the image of a geisha is such a powerful thing. Without her geisha makeup and attire, the main character Sayuri is just an unloved woman unable to survive on her own, but when in costume she is beautiful, desired, and valuable. I don't really like this idea, mostly because I believe women should be respected and loved as themselves, but I do think that it holds a certain truth. Clothing, hair, and makeup make a difference in how we are perceived, how we feel, and how we behave. This is part of the reason for my obsession/ fascination with fashion, and I find it to be strongly connected to my love of theater. Getting dressed each morning means choosing my character for the day. Do I want to be a nerd, a goddess, or a glamazon? Do I want to be wild, fabulous, or soulful? Just as getting into costume before acting in a play helps me to embrace the character I am portraying, getting dressed in the morning helps me decide which facet of myself I want to be. It's a never-ending game of dress-up with the world as my stage. And/or runway.
How fun is that?
For added enjoyment, exaggerate your character for the day. Usually, our clothes help us take on a persona without our knowledge. If you feel smokin' in your slinky party dress, you tend to strut a little and enter a room with confidence. It's not a conscious decision, but it happens just the same. My suggestion is to recognize the effect that your wardrobe has on you, choose your outfit accordingly, and commit yourself fully to the role you decide to take on. Don't just strut in that party dress- dance when the mood strikes you, use big gestures when you talk, and treat your fabulous self to what it deserves (chocolate mousse, anyone?). Just have fun with it!
Today my character is a punked out hippy with a hint of chicness. I've been waving to strangers and returning confused glances with a shrug and raised eyebrows all day. In my somewhat bizarre version of reality, that's what punky-chic hippy chicks do.
*This post has been part of Fashion Through Literature Week at The Fashion-y Blog*
