Dress Up and Play

Random Costume Sketch

I think this one is my favorite. Of All Time.

RIP John Hughes

Coco Avant Chanel part.1 The Beginning

Audrey Tautou plays Coco Chanel in the upcoming biopic Coco Avant Chanel. 

Costume Designer Catherine Leterrier was brought on for the challenging task of recreating the most influential couturier to ever grace the earth. As the film follows Chanel's life - mostly her early years- you will almost never see the tradition Chanel looks we know today.

 

Coco Chanel was abandoned by her parents early in life - having to find her own way by working as a seamstress and then as a milliner.

 

The movie follows Coco in her early years, concentrating on her rise and the early elements that would influence her design choices.

 

 

 

 

‘Of course there is pressure because Coco was the greatest. It is like, for an actor, when you play Shakespeare. But then I just approached it like any other film,' Catherine Leterrier

Cheri

Oooh! Look at all the pretty pictures!

This is a new Michelle Pfeiffer movie entitled "Cheri".

 

 

 

I am *in love* with the color in this movie. Michelle's skin just glows in every photo.

The costumes are by Consolata Boyle. Looks like she's finally gotten a great shot at doing something truly beautiful for beauty's sake. (Which is not always the point of costume design, but fun to look at nonetheless.) She has a pretty extensive work history, but nothing that sings like this does... unless you count Mary Rielly... which we don't.

Vera Ellen

A gorgeous dress on a gorgeous girl, Vera Ellen. Some previous pics of the gal here too.

Found

I found this great set of photos at the Ft. Greene Flea Market today! I am so enthralled with them. Only I have no idea what date they're from. Anyone any idea?

UPDATE: I showed these pics to my costume supervisor and some other talented young ladies and they suspect these photos of western girls in Kimono are from the very late 1880s. Major clues: the bangs popular at that time period, as well as the corseted figures underneath. They see a very high bust line which is in keeping of the corset popular at the time. Thanks ladies!

Life Week- Adrian

I'm having a Theme Week! To celebrate the conclusion of my first Graduate School semester (*phew*), I'm posting fantastic costume images from the new Life Image Database every day. If you don't already know, Life Magazine has put their entire database of images dating back to 17something on the web. Just type in "source:life" and then keywords into the search box on Google. It's a fantastic resource for any and every subject of study.

But of course here we are all about costumes: beautiful, grotesque, bizarre and hopefully very entertaining.

Today is Dresses by Adrian, the amazingly talented Designer who designed hundreds of movies in the early 20th Century, including Dorothy's dress in the Wizard of Oz. These are beautiful images of dresses, although I don't know whom or what they were designed for (probably just GlamorousNess).

Source:Life

Old stuff

I'm a regular reader of Posie Gets Cozy .. a super cute blog about a lady in Portland who has created the most beautiful life for herself. It's how to do it.

Anyway, while catching up on my reader today (...I told you was not very up-to-the-minute) I read an older post  - with the pretty picture above-  about the upcoming 'Cranford' mini-series. Looks beautiful. I'm more of a netflixer myself so I'm definitely checking this out. Check your local PBS, it'll be probably be on again soon. 
Oh- the designer is Jenny Beavan... a woman living the costumer's dream, doing fantastic period costumes what seems like her whole career: Gosford Park, Jane Eyre, Jefferson in Paris, Emma, Sense and Sensibility..... the list goes on... and on.

Sunflower Dresses

sunflower dresses, originally uploaded by Ephemerally Yours.

I haven't had time to research new movie news lately so I'm going to show some great costume photos. This photo a random vintage find from Ephemerally Yours on Flickr. Clearly they/re supposed to be sunflowers- it's just surprising to me how large and bold the costumes are... you always think of the the early 1900s (I'm taking my best guess) as being delicate and soft. I wonder what sort of production they were for. Any guesses?

Go to Flickr to see more of his great photos.

Current Costume Updates

Here are some great articles about the current nominees:

More of the same of Jaqueline Durran the greatest dress of the year. The part I liked best ends the debate on the one whole dress vs. seperate pieces issue once and for all :

'It also had to survive a secret rendezvous on a bookshelf!

Well, we had lots of the gowns. The fabric was so fine that the bodices kept tearing. We had three or four skirts and 10 bodices and when they tore, we would quickly repair them. But it only took about a day to shoot that scene.- Jacqueline Durran '

... and one of them is being auctioned off here.(Be sure to scroll down to see a good clip of the film showing the dress.)

And a great article that reveals tidbits into the genius that is Colleen Atwood.

How about Alan Rickman and Timothy Spall's characters? They really are quite comical and cartoony.

Alan [Judge Turpin] was the slightly grubby man-about-town. His clothes have two or three color screens on the fabrics that gave him an oily, slick feeling. Alan and Timothy [Beadle Bamford] are the Romantics, that's what we called them. They are actually a bit more Georgian, the period before the Victorian era, a bit more decadent and flowery.

When people have a great moment in their lives, they tend to stay in that moment stylistically. - Colleen Atwood
(I love how she thinks about that stuff!)

Watch the video here which Alan Rickman talks about his ideas for keeping the guy dirty.