Character and Costume in Cinema: the Hollywood Costumeexhibition
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SCP 3 (1) pp. 91–96 Intellect Limited 2018 Studies in Costume & Performance Volume 3 Number 1 scp © 2018 Intellect Ltd Document. English language. doi: 10.1386/scp.3.1.91_1 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) 91 96 Character and costume in © 2018 Intellect Ltd cinema: The Hollywood 2018 Costume exhibition ARTICLES 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 maga- zine 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 cine- matic 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 exhi- bition made clear that movies are about people and that it is the costume designer in collaboration with the actor who creates the character. This exhi- bition 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.