Character and Costume in Cinema: the Hollywood Costumeexhibition

Home , Costume Designers Guild, Deborah Nadoolman Landis, Jacqueline West, James Acheson, Marit Allen

scp 3 (1) pp. 91–96 Intellect Limited 2018

Studies in Costume & Performance

Intellect

10.1386/scp.3.1.91_1

3 DEBORAH NADOOLMAN LANDIS Copley Center of Costume Design, University of California Los 1 Angeles (UCLA)

Introduction KEYWORDS During a masterclass held in 2012, and in reference to her extensive publish- cinema ing on film costume design,1 Deborah Nadoolman Landis invited the audi- fashion ence to also write on the subject, noting ‘I ask my colleagues if I am to be the costume only one to fill the shelf with books on costume design and film’. Landis was character the curator of the V&A exhibition, Hollywood Costume,2 the most comprehen- design sive exhibition of its kind in decades. The exhibition analysed the extensive performance and detailed process employed to create a character through costume. Landis’ paper, on 22 April 2012, launched a series of talks titled Marking the Paradigm 1. Relevant to this discussion are Shift in Design for Performance Through Costume organized by Donatella Screencraft: Costume Barbieri for the Research Hub in Design for Performance at London College of Design (2003), Dressed: Fashion, University of the Arts London. The above quote and those that follow A Century of Hollywood Costume Design (2007), are edited with Landis from a transcript of the event. Hollywood Costume (2012), Filmcraft: Costume Design (2012), Landis on recycling costumes Hollywood Sketchbook: A Century of Costume There is a tradition in the theatre and in the movies to re-use costumes. Illustration (2012), and Costume designers are the original recyclers and up cyclers; nothing is wasted. the texts Costume After a film has completed shooting (wrapped) all garments are cleaned Designers, Costumers and Fashion Designers and placed into the costume stock of a studio or costume rental company.

www.intellectbooks.com 91

SCP_3_1_print.indb 91 17-May-18 11:03:56 AM Deborah Nadoolman Landis

(2006) and A President’s Costumes will be rented, used and re-used, re-trimmed, re-cut, re-dyed and Letter: Character Building (2005), which recreated for new roles. These clothes are studio assets that must ‘pay for their are both published in room and board’. With few cinema costume archives and museum collections the Costume Designers it is almost impossible to find important costumes except for the few that were Guild’s magazine, The Costume Designer, sold, stolen or auctioned and sold to private collectors. founded by Landis.

2. The Hollywood Costume exhibition On why Landis chose to create and to curate the Hollywood was on display at Costume exhibition the Victoria and Albert Museum from When I became President of the Costume Designers Guild in Los Angeles my 20 October 2012–27 intention was to correct the imbalance and disparity of pay between produc- January 2013. tion designers and costume designers. However, very quickly it became appar- 3. The Iron Lady (2011), ent that union contracts were (and are) burdened with contractual precedent. directed by Phyllida Lloyd. The difference in salary was rooted in perfidious gender bias: costume design is women’s work and worth less. As president, I endured two series of contract 4. The exhibition The Golden Age of Couture: negotiations. The studio representatives had little respect and knowledge of Paris and London costume design. Attitudes persisted that anyone in a skirt could fill this role. 1947–1957 was on A seismic shift and reframing of the field was required. And, if progress could display at the V&A South Kensington from not be achieved for my colleagues and for myself, conditions must improve for 22 September 2007 to 6 the next generation of costume designers. I became a costume design activist. January 2008. If the union contract was immutable, the perception of costume design could be changed with a strategic and a methodical effort. Educating the audience and the industry seemed like the smart move to raise the profile of costume designers. There are many directors and producers who understand our role to be ‘clothes providers’. The relationship between performance and costume design is no secret to actors. When Meryl Streep became Margaret Thatcher,3 costume designer Consolata Boyle assisted that transformation. When Streep won the Academy Award for Best Actress, Consolata Boyle shared that triumph. The actor is in the centre of the frame and the work of the costume designer is in the centre of the frame too. Performance and costume are twinned. That is a powerful message. Nothing was going to change for costume designers without an inter- vention; without a disruption to the paradigm that was keeping us down. While president of the Guild in 2005 I founded The Costume Designer magazine and established an international mailing list. In Los Angeles, I began to lecture at the American Film Institute and the USC School of Cinematic Arts to the next generation of producers and directors. Not surprisingly, there were no costume design classes at any university film department. Between 2003–2012 I authored six cinema costume volumes. In 2007, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London received my proposal for an encyclopaedic cinema costume exhibition. I discussed the exhibition proposal with the brilliant costume designer James Acheson. He warned, ‘Bad idea. Dead frocks on dummies. This is not the Golden Age of Couture’.4 Our clothes are created to be seen projected flat in two dimensions, not in person. These are theatrical garments, perhaps imper- fectly manufactured and perhaps exaggerated for effect. Costumes are always designed to be seen within a narrative and visual context. An exhibition rips them from that artificially constructed frame. The imperative for this exhibition was to provide a narrative scaffold (a new story) and a physical space (with the right lighting) for each costume to play a new role in a new production. Just as for a film, a musical score was written specially for the exhibition. This provided the emotional current that accompanied the visitor on their cinematic journey though the galleries.

92 Studies in Costume & Performance

SCP_3_1_print.indb 92 17-May-18 11:03:56 AM Character and costume in cinema

Hollywood Costume was unique because it offered the V&A visitor with a practitioner-centric point of view. Each label presented a first-person quote, revealing an insight into the costume designer’s creative process. Costume design was showcased as a vibrant, modern and kinetic art form. The exhibition made clear that movies are about people and that it is the costume designer in collaboration with the actor who creates the character. This exhibition was not about the clothes; it was emphatically about the creation of the personality that inhabits each costume. As the director Tim Burton said, ‘What’s great about [the costume] is it’s the visual representation of the inter- nal side of people’ (Burton 2005: 32).

On the three acts: ‘Deconstruction, dialogue and the finale’ The Hollywood Costume exhibition followed a thematic structure that mirrored costume design practice. Starting with the script, on animated screens the text on each page was highlighted for the visitor to find the clues to each character. Designers first must be readers and analysers of the story. Opposite this plinth was a stand of video monitors with an exercise in identity and dress; a diverse group of V&A visitors was interviewed and filmed. Each visitor was asked to deconstruct their own clothes giving a biography of each garment that they were wearing. This intimate conversation about the visitors’ own history was a key element in the first act of the exhibition. Costume designers must discover who the characters are before they can create their clothes. The second plinth included modern costumes from the Bourne Ultimatum (2007), Argo (2012) and The Big Lebowski (1998), created by designers Shay Cunliffe, Jacqueline West and Mary Zophres. Costume design is often understood as a practice limited to period and fantasy films. But all films are ‘costume films’. Each one of us is wearing an amalgam of our own story. In a contemporary film the work of a costume designer is hidden in plain sight. First and foremost, costume designers are tasked with creating real people. On her research for Brokeback Mountain (2005), Marit Allen wrote,

Everything worn by cowboys and ranchers has a meaning and a cultural reference. It would be very easy for an outsider unfamiliar with the code to make a mistake. For instance cowboys wear Wrangler jeans (they’re much tighter) and ranchers wear looser Levi’s. Even the shape and heel height on a cowboy boot tells a tale. So does the height, color and brim and shape of a hat, which also varies from state to state. For instance, Jack’s broader Texas hat is different from the one Ennis wears in Wyoming. And all of this is unspoken but rigorously observed.

The second Hollywood Costume gallery ‘Dialogue’ focused on creative collaborations between directors, costume designers and actors. Directors Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese, Mike Nichols and Tim Burton were paired with their costume designers Edith Head, Sandy Powell, Ann Roth and Colleen Atwood at a long dining table that doubled as a projection surface. The collaborators were each interviewed on camera about one of their films and one character’s costume. Vertical monitors of the interviewees were placed into the back of dining chairs facing each other across the table with the original costume mounted nearby. These interviews were augmented by projection mapping on the table that included the screenplay, costume

www.intellectbooks.com 93

SCP_3_1_print.indb 93 17-May-18 11:03:56 AM Deborah Nadoolman Landis

5. Dorothy’s aunt in The design illustrations, period and contemporary research and mood boards, Wizard of Oz. fitting photos of the actors and a film clip from each movie. This section was followed by vast chronologically indexed plinths of costumes on custom-made mannequins, which provided a historical Hollywood timeline from silent film through the technological innovation of Avatar (2009). The final plinth featured Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro on video monitors, seated on either side of a projection table and surrounded by five of their costumes on mannequins. They candidly discussed how they each use costume to affect the transformation from themselves into someone new. In comparing how each of her new characters must dress like themselves to how we feel in our own clothes, Streep said, ‘Because you just don’t feel right in the wrong thing’ (2012).

On finding Dorothy’s gingham pinafore from The Wizard of Oz (1939) In 2011, I was sitting in my office in the V&A Research Department working on the forthcoming exhibition when one morning Keith Lodwick, my V&A assistant curator, received a mysterious phone call. ‘My employer owns the blue gingham pinafore from the Wizard of Oz would “the curator” be interested in having it for the Hollywood Costume exhibition?’. Yes, we were interested! The caller asked, ‘Would the curator be available to meet next Tuesday at 10:00 at the Temple Street Tube Station?’. And then, ‘Will you please bring your passports and ID?’. With Sam Gatley, our V&A conservator, we took the tube to Temple Street. Two women were standing at the top of the stairs. ‘We’re waiting too, we’re private textile conservators’. ‘Do you know whom we’re meeting?’. ‘No’. Shortly, a young woman arrived, introduced herself and then, ‘Hello, do you have your ID? Yes? Please follow me’. In single file, we followed her to a private bank on Fleet Street. We presented our credentials and identification to a gentleman wearing a cutaway coat and striped trousers. He escorted us for the long walk to the back of the bank. On the book-lined walls were leather-bound ledgers: 1945, 1910, 1890, 1850, 1835, 1789, 1760. At last we arrived at a steel safe door marked ‘Chubb’. We entered what appeared to be a conference room and waited. Two uniformed security guards arrived carrying a long blue box tied with a string. They placed it on the table. We removed the top of the box and there ‘she’ was. One look inside and I burst into tears. I gasped, ‘Adrian was a genius!’. The pinafore was very soft and limp. The colour was surprisingly muted (not faded). Unmistakably crafted by Auntie Em5 herself with knotty uneven stitchery and wiggly seams. This was a home-made garment sewn on an early treadle machine. My guess is that Dorothy’s forever dress was constructed of the cheapest of 1939 cotton gingham fabric. It may have cost a nickel (5 cents) a yard from a General Store in a Kansas town. It was perfection. In 1939, known as ‘Hollywood’s Greatest Year’, Adrian also designed the luxurious gowns for The Women (1939). Lined with silk, French seamed, embroidered and beaded these couture clothes cost a fortune and were made in the workroom of MGM studios. Adrian’s brilliance: gorgeously attiring The Women (1939) and inhabiting Auntie Em to produce the right clothes for The Wizard of Oz (1939); he served MGM’s stars, their directors and their audience; and he helped make these beloved films iconic.

On costume design Through no fault of its own fashion undermines the sovereignty of costume design. To the average person a costume designer must have ‘something’ in common with fashion, we design clothes. ‘Fashion in film’, handsomely

94 Studies in Costume & Performance

SCP_3_1_print.indb 94 17-May-18 11:03:56 AM Character and costume in cinema

alliterative, has been employed often to describe costume design. Sadly, this denomination hurts the field. Fashion is monetized in a way that costume design cannot be. Fashion is an art and an entrepreneurial pursuit. A fashion designer’s job is to build their label, brand and license for profit or at least to stay in business. Costume designers have no label and they are work-for- hire. They are paid weekly until their last day on the production. They have no profit participation from the clothes that they design. Also they do not share in the financial success of the film. Modern motion picture marketing has only just found the costume designer as an asset to promote its product. Recently, increased press coverage on costume design and designers has raised the profile and the prestige of the field, but disappointingly wages have flattened. Costume designers own nothing. The costumes are rarely the star of a movie. As the centrepiece of a film they win awards by catching the audience’s attention. However, the best costume design may be invisible when the audience is truly invested in the story and its outcome. Filmmakers want the audience to believe and the costume’s role is to disappear. The word ‘character’ does not fully express our task. We ask the audience to believe that (like us) the people in the story have had a life before the film begins and will continue their lives after the story ends. Costume designers know that their work is ‘Not about the clothes’. We aspire to create personalities; we design from the inside out. The clothes must not sabotage a dramatic scene or get in the way of the screenplay. Our role must be defined and reframed if costume designers wish to increase our value as professionals and as artists.

On ‘costume’ as a diminished word In 2005, I visited Mary Lee Bandy, the late curator of film at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, to talk about the possibilities of a costume exhibition. I began with the ‘craft’ of costume design. Bandy shouted, ‘Stop, stop, stop!’. She said, ‘If you want to talk about craft, the American Craft, Museum is across the street. This is the Museum of Modern Art. I’m interested in the art of costume design’. Mortified that I had denigrated my own profession, I recovered my composure and explained that there was little understand- ing about the costume designers’ contribution to cinema; actualizing the real people in each story. Bandy said, ‘Costume. That’s such a bad name for what you do. It’s a terrible name, don’t you have another?’. And, a decade later I am still trying to find the right one. In 2006, while researching cinema costume illustrations I had the great fortune to meet the late David Copley; one of the world’s greatest collectors of costume designs. And with his generosity, in 2009, I became the David C. Copley Chair and Director of the David C. Copley Center for Costume Design at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. Copley’s costume sketches now reside at UCLA Library’s Special Collections. From my post at UCLA I teach future directors, screenwriters, producers and scholars the rich legacy and contribution of costume design to cinema storytelling. This position has given me the longed-for platform to accomplish this goal.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Quotes were transcribed and edited by Donatella Barbieri with Emily Collett and Jennifer Munday.

www.intellectbooks.com 95

SCP_3_1_print.indb 95 17-May-18 11:03:56 AM Deborah Nadoolman Landis

REFERENCES Allen, Marit (2006), ‘“Brokeback” clothing speaks louder than words’, Los Angeles Times, 4 January, http://screenertv.com/news-features/brokeback- cloth/. Accessed 19 February 2018. Burton, Tim (2005), Tim Burton: Interviews (ed. Kristian Fraga), Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi. Nadoolman Landis, Deborah (2003), Screencraft: Costume Design, Hove: RotoVision. ——— (2004), 50 Designers, 50 Costumes: Concept to Character, Beverly Hills, CA: Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. ——— (2006), ‘President’s letter’, Costume Designer, Winter 2006. ——— (2007), Dressed: A Century of Hollywood Costume Design, New York: Harper Collins. ——— (2012a), Hollywood Costume, London: V&A Publishing. ——— (2012b), Hollywood Sketchbook: A Century of Costume Illustration, New York: Harper Collins. ——— (2012c), Filmcraft: Costume Design, Lewis East Sussex: Ilex Press. Streep, Meryl (2012), in person interview by Deborah Nadoolman Landis, New York, 20 July 2012.

SUGGESTED CITATION Nadoolman Landis, D. (2018), ‘Character and costume in cinema: The Hollywood Costume exhibition’, Studies in Costume & Performance, 3:1, pp. 91–96, doi: 10.1386/scp.3.1.91_1

CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS Professor Deborah Nadoolman Landis, Ph.D., is an internationally recognized costume designer of many iconic films, including Animal House (1978), The Blues Brothers (1980), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Michael Jackson’s Thriller (1983), Trading Places (1983) and Coming to America (1988) for which she was nominated for an Academy Award. Landis is the author of such books as Dressed: A Century of Hollywood Costume Design (2007), Hollywood Sketchbook: A Century of Costume Illustration (2012) and Hollywood Costume (2012), the award-winning catalogue of the Victoria & Albert Museum exhibition, which opened in 2012. Deborah Nadoolman Landis is the editor and chief of the Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Film and Television Costume Design to be published in 2020. As a practitioner, past-president of the Costume Designers Guild, Local 892, in Los Angeles, Governor of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, and as director of the David C. Copley Center for Costume Design at UCLA, Landis is a tireless advocate for motion picture and television costuming. E-mail: [email protected]

Deborah Nadoolman Landis has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format that was submitted to Intellect Ltd.

96 Studies in Costume & Performance

SCP_3_1_print.indb 96 17-May-18 11:03:56 AM