Costume

THE COSTUME'SCONSTRUCTION AND PURPOSE

A costume can be "built" (made), purchased, altered, or rented. Often a designer will employ all four methods. A designer always uses a crew. Some crew members, such as pattern cutters, seamstresses, and tailors, are essential to any project. Others are film-specific, such as specialists in beads, embroidery, lace, feathers, leather, plastic, rubber, straw, elastic, or netting; shirt, shoe, hat, and accessory makers; as well as blacksmiths, armorers, jewelers, weavers, knitters, dyers, or furriers. Cloth may even have to be made from scratch. A designer decides whether to use vintage material, re-create the look, or blend old and new fabrics. For example, Marilyn Vance, for The Untouchables (1987), re-tailored 1980s leather clothing into a 1930s style. A garment might be burned, beaten, stained, washed, or cut to make it look genuine. Designers must know how to achieve authenticity and have observed everyday wear appropriate to period fabric (which may stress differently than contemporary material). They must know how a hem frays on a floor, how weight wears on a shirt's shoulder, how sweat affects Lycra™, or a how a sword cuts brocade.

Attention at every level of detail is essential; a loose thread will ruin a close-up. The gun holster shine rubbed on trousers such as Colleen Atwood (b. 1950) made for Wyatt Earp (1994), for example, will convey realism. As importantly, the designer must make the costume unobtrusive even in movies like Working Girl (1988), Jungle Fever (1991), or Spider-Man (2002) that rely on dress explicitly to reveal the character's sense of self. Gabriella Pescucci, whose work ranges from the riotous imagination of The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988) to the historical accuracy of The Age of Innocence (1993, Academy Award ^® ) and who trained with the great Italian costume designer Piero Tosi (b. 1927) (who worked primarily with Luchino Visconti) throughout the 1970s, declared this plainly: "My greatest satisfaction comes from having my work disappear in the film" (Landis, p. 91). But the costume is a subliminal vehicle and it is the designer's job, as Albert Wolsky (b. 1930), Academy Award ^® –winner for All That Jazz (1979), said, to "identify, through elimination and simplification, who somebody is" (Landis, p. 168). Years before, Adrian (1903–1959), Head of Costume at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) from 1928 to 1942, revealed this interior structure of costume design with his statement that "one could line up all the gowns and tell the screen story."