A Sea of Fabric

Penny Rose is a costume designer who has worked in the film industry since the 1970s. Rose was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Costume Design three times for the films Evita (1996), Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006).

Many of the costumes featured in the Pirates of the Caribbean series are worthy of praise, but my all time favorite is definitely Captain Jack Sparrows look. It looks so washed out and raggedy, but the whole costume is composed of several elements that have given Sparrow his identity. Some of the pieces are:

* woven blue-gray eight-button jacket with flared, pleated tails and
        oversize slit cuffs
* distressed 12-button aubergine linen vest
* oversize, open-necked cream linen shirt with billowing sleeves
* faded brown cotton button-fly pants with buttoned, buckled cuffs
* distressed brown leather belt with oversize antique-finished buckle
* distressed brown suede knee-high boots with 10-inch cuffs
* cream-colored sash with red stripes
* fingerless medium brown glove with wrist strips
* frayed black rag with striped accents

The costume of this costume is very well known and spread online thanks to the fact that one of the costume replicas worn by a stuntman was auctioned.



Some other very noteworthy costumes are the golden gown that Elizabeth wears at the beginning of the movie (Curse of the Black Pearl) and Tia Dalma's dress (Dead Man's Chest). The dress that was washed away in the sea for the first movie was actually also auctioned online, and thanks to this many people have been able to replicate it incredibly accurately. The fabric reportedly is Chelsea Sable and the lace on the sleeves is English Net. Both of these fabrics are available online.

Tia Dalma's outfit is very much the opposite of this gown, it is a simply raggedy dress with accesories to finish the look. However the treatment that the fabric seems to have received is marvelous.



There also seems to be several layers of fabric that were used to make the textile that the dress seems mostly made out. I particularly like that even though this dress looks so decayed and aged it still keeps that look that goes in hand with the time the movie is set on. It is still very conservative and with lots of details in the finishing.

The costumes in this movie all look so very cool and make you wanna be each and every one of the characters, and I think that is an important thing that good costumes can achieve. You wanna be certain characters to look at yourself in their clothes and that makes you root for them even more.