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.

Frequencies

Also called, OXV: The Manual. Everyone takes a test that determines their luck, their frequency. Zak has a negative number, so he is literally out of sync with nature. Marie has an ultra high frequency, so she is highly intelligent. Everything works out for her. She randomly finds 200 pounds on the ground, which is the exact change she needed for an item she purchased. The downside to her high frequency is she has no emotions. The luckier you are, the less you care.
Zak and Marie are complete opposites. They can only meet for 60 seconds, and then nature starts to rebel. Clouds start forming above Zak's head and begins to only rain on him. The next time they meet, a plane flies overhead and begins dropping luggage all around him. Zak is in love with Marie, but she is only using him for experiment.
The costume designer, Milica Todorovic
Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmSfzixf314
music video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTPbG7imt8g

In the school, once they find out what frequency they are, they have to wear ties with the color that resonates with their frequency. It's a way of knowing who's who. Zak wears red, Marie wears purple. These colors stick with them even after school.
Zak almost always wears red, when he doesn't he wears black and white. Marie always wears purple until her frequency changes (except pink on their date).

Zak, through his teenage years, looks disorganized. His hair is long like a boy in a boy band. His tie looks like he keeps loosening it and wringing it.
Zak's best friend, Theo, is exactly in the middle, so he wears blue. His dad wears blue as well.


Marie's father doesn't seem to follow any color scheme. When you first see him he wears red, but later he wears blue. Her mother first wears a dark purple shirt. Overall she just looks very formal and expensive.
When Marie is conducting her experiment, she tries flirting. She wears a knee length skirt and you see her unbutton the top of her blouse and loosen her lavender tie. She even fiddles with her hair a bit. She wears a white dress for the dance but has purple flowers.

Marie-Curie Fortune

Isaac-Newton Midgeley (Zak)

Theodor-Adorno Strauss (Theo)

Leonardo's Butterfly

Jenny Beavan (born 1950 in London, England) is an English costume designer. She has won an Academy Award and has been nominated eight times, most recently for The King's Speech. Beavan also received a Tony Award nomination for Best Costume Design for the play Private Lives.
She is a graduate of the London-based Central School of Art and Design.

This time I would like to particularly discuss Beavan's work in the film "Ever After, A Cinderella Story". This movie is to this day my favorite adaptation of the Cinderella Fairy Tail.



I will start by talking about my favorite costume in the movie. This dress, most commonly named "Breathe" is simply one of the most beautiful creations. The details in the bodice and the sleeves are extremely intricate , yet the shape of the dress to me remains very simple and elegant.

I found a website that talks in particular detail about the construction and embroidery that was used for the dress. This images show some of the impressive hand sewing techniques that were used to create this impressive work of art.

The movie itself tries to be a portrayal of the "true" Cinderella story, that being not having a fairy god mother that uses magic, but this dress looks indeed very magical and helps bring that element of magic to the film without departing from its intentions.

The dress and the makeup bring about a very feminine look, but to me the wings are what showcases some of that inner strength that Danielle shows throughout the film. The wings arent angel or really butterfly looking, they have all these pointy ends that to me look sorta devilish. So even there in that flamboyant detail, the dress is balanced and really shows the true identity of the character.










In direct contrast to this dress we have Danielle's everyday, or work clothes. I love the fabric that they used for this, it looks so rough and cheap. A perfect fit for someone who is working as a servant.







The last costume I will talk about is her courtier costume. These are supposed to be clothes from Danielle's mother fit for a day in the Royal Court. Because of this, the outfit should be something that sort of doesnt really look like her, but that she is still able to wear and look beautiful on.

This dress looks very appropriate for the time and it flows beautifully. This image shows some other costumes wore by extras and minor characters. The time setting in the movie is that of Medieval France and I think that the costumes remain loyal to the time setting throughout the entire movie.

Costume Critique: One Day

One Day happens to be one of my favorite books, and I felt the movie portrayed the story well and did the book justice. To be honest, the costumes aren't anything out of the ordinary, nor was the film nominated for any awards. However, I loved how the designer Odile Dicks was able to capture 20 years of fashion to follow and highlight character development. The story is of two individuals, Emma and Dexter who meet the night of their University graduation and then one day each year we are given a glimpse into where life has taken them.

When we first meet Emma, her wardrobe is rather drab and outdated-but it certainly suits her character. She is very feminist and aspires to write a novel, but life quickly takes a turn and she finds herself uninspired and working at a crappy Mexican restaurant. In each period we see Anne Hathaway, I really felt that her costumes illustrated her station in life, be it finally becoming a novelist, a teacher, a lover, and I appreciated that I could relate to a lot of her transformations. From different designs, silhouettes, materials, long hair, short hair, glasses, her wardrobe remained real and true to life. I found it interesting that when it came to costumes, Anne Hathway's were really the focus of tranformation. Her costar, Jim Sturgess, however, had less of a focus on wardrobe and more on using his personality and life decisions to illustrate his self destructive nature. Coming from a wealthy background, his wardrobe is either suit and tie, or the latest fashion trend. 

I think of all costumes constructionally, my favorite would be the purple cocktail dress Emma wore. I loved how Odile incorporated the sheer sleeves with a very 1920's fringe along the hem of the dress. While being very simple with subtle detail, the dress is beautiful and I myself would love to wear it. 

Last lab of 2015

Before the break I worked on sizing up the pattern for Golde's shirt. I am really happy that I am learning how to do that. It is kinda frustrating because I am such a perfectionist. I want my lines to be perfect, so trying to make the curves just right is hard, or at least accepting that they won't be perfect is hard. I'm excited to finish the shirt and see it worn.

Robin Hood for the Playstation Generation

BBC TV show, Robin Hood. The first two seasons' costume designer was Frances Tempest.
Interview with Frances: http://www.boldoutlaw.com/robint/francestempest.html

FT: It became obvious that we had to do everything in Hungary and buy everything in Hungary. We couldn't spend money anywhere else. So we had to set up a little manufacturing studio to actually sit and churn the costumes out. And I had another little workshop set up doing all the painting and distressing and dyeing.

"I had to have another whole department -- well, three or four people -- on permanent renovation and repair duty. Although I wanted them to look worn, I didn't want them to look like scarecrows. So I had people constantly repairing and we had to have so many duplicates of every costume. I think we had something like ten outfits for Robin in the end."

"Robin's band -- I wanted then to look like eco warriors, really. The modern equivalent of the outlaw." Their outfits had to give them their own identities, but they still had to look like a group.
Robin's seude hoodie. He had a cotton version for when he fell in water or had oil poured on him, and a lightweight version.


Much, on the left, with his bandanna and sweater.
Robin in the middle, with his hoodie and the forest green color.
Below, he has a plain shirt with a scarf. Sometimes he wears a green one. He occasionally wears a vest over either one. He also wraps his arms with cloth around the sleeves.
Robin has a brown vest that has medals on the front. It shows that he's a war hero.

Here you can see his quiver going through his hood.

AWW: He also had the duster that was like a western hero, and almost like a regency cape.
FT:  It was a cross between a regency cape and Sherlock Holmes and How the West Was Won. I was trying to roll all of those sorts of things into it. Of course, it was tempered - like things always are - by practical considerations. He had to be able to get on and off his horse in it. He had to be able to fight in it. There were stuntmen, but a lot of the actors did an awful lot of their own stuntwork. So all of those practical considerations had to be uppermost.
AWW: You also had the other outfit for Guy, with the piping along the sleeves.
FT:  Yes, which was fastened with these wolf's head clips. And then he had wolves on the knuckles -- like knuckle dusters -- on the gauntlets. All I can say is that I spent a lot of time hanging about in motorbike shops in Budapest.

Guy of Gisborne, "a fantastic, sexy racing driver"
 

The Sheriff:
"I just wanted to be a dark figure and keep him as simple and sophisticated in a funny sort of a way. I mean [Keith] wanted to look like a drug dealer. That was his version of what he was playing. So we met somewhere in the middle on that."

Djaq went through the most change from season 1 to 2. In the first season she had to look boyish. Her military type jacket was very straight and square. It helped to hide her curves. In the second season, she had longer hair and they definitely showed her figure.





Marian



Night Watchman. Fitted clothing.

A world of Horror

Wendy Partridge is a costume designer who has worked in over 50 films. Her credits include Hellboy, Blade II, and Underworld: Evolution. She designed the costumes for Silent Hill and Silent Hill: Revelation.

On this post I will focus on Partridge's designs for the Silent Hill Movies. The Silent Hill series started in 1999 as a PlayStation video game under the genre of Horror-Survival. Since then several installments of the game have been released, each presenting new characters and the experiences they live through when events beckon them to return to the mysterious town of Silent Hill.

However, the main protagonists clothes is not what makes Wendy Partridge worthy of my attention, it is rather the monsters and nightmarish apparitions that she was able to bring to life in the big screen that make her in my opinion a phenomenal designer.
In the movie, Silent Hill has become a nightmare prison for the fanatics who under their false beliefs tried to stop the apocalypse by torturing a small girl named Alessa. Within this Silent Hill everyone has a haggard decrepit look, letting us know about their suffering and pain.

 They are still wearing very conservative clothes, but all of them have a very old and dusty look about them. Signifying how long they have been trapped within the nightmare and how the prison is eating them away.

To further torture its victims, Alessa has created several monsters within Silent Hill. The most prominent ones withing the movie are the undead nurses and Pyramid Head.

Pyramid Head is Alessa's executioner, and it is my favorite costume of the movie. He is very simple clothing wise. He merely wears sort of an apron that is seemingly made of human skin sewn together. The most important part of this look however is his iconic head piece and the giant butcher knife that he wields. Both of these pieces are supposed to be made of very heavy material to the point of weighing him down. Partridge in a special feature included in the movie DVD talks about how they achieved that look without making the pieces too heavy by a treatment of paint that made both pieces look like very study rusty metal.

The nurses on the other hand, require more fabric work. They all wear their nurses uniform (one piece dress and cap), but an important element is how the nurses have their faces covered in bandages or simply have no face at all. Here again its not really about the display of sewing techniques, but about the fabric treatment that she achieves. She turns simple fabric into something terrifying, by giving it that decayed and almost putrefied look. The make up that lets us see the veins on the nurses bodies and their disfigured faces also enhances this effect.