Dress Up and Play

Life Week- Big Shoulder

Today Life Magazine has some "big shoulder fashions" from 1959. Amazing.

Source: Life images

It's Summer

This has been the busiest summer I've ever had! I didn't even know I was this social.
I will resume film studies and sussing out info of coming attractions... I'm excited about Mamma Mia!

But until that happens, we're going to stick with fun costume history references and design details.

Did you know that the Dover site has a cool feature where you can sign up and get free pics and clip art ever week- they send it right to your email along with info on sales and such. (Just check the "Free Samples" link on the left side.) Even if you're not a clip art user, I always save these pics every week and find them a great design reference.

This week one of the books featured was a great Women Illustrated book- check out this cutie bathing suit! I wish I had it for my Sunday beach trip... ooof I've been to too many BarBQue s this summer to keep sporting my old two piece. This would be much cuter:

Leatherhead

jock, originally uploaded by Hepped-up on Goofballs.

Ephemerically Yours sent me this picture after seeing how much I like these helmets. Look how cool his little stripey unform is too. How funny is that tropical setting in the back?

Leatherheads

Every morning as I go to work I've been seeing this poster in the subway station... I love it!! I don't think it could get any bette than this. *Pow* straight pic! No big letters or badly collaged pics of the actors in funny arrangements. Just a straight shot of the characters in the most awesome outfits I've seen in a long time.

The website is set up really great, they have the sort of old-timey poster sort of graphics. Pretty cool. Not much stuff on it though.

I'm in love with these uniforms. I'm having a sort of uniform 'Thing' lately. (Although that does not pertain to live men... how odd.) I added in this last shot to show off how the palette translates throughout the scenes. The color palette is oddly bright even though it uses muted tones. The mud is killing me! Was that a happy accident? Did Louise Frogley foresee the the mud brown color as a dominant one and worked from there? It makes the movie for me- I can't wait to see it!

Loving the bow detail on the hat. Awesome leather jacket on the Cloonster there. Nice and beat up. Emerald City glasses...okay...I can go with it.

Some bright tights. And a bright coat too. Like I said, really bright colors.. but it ends up looking very controlled and muted on screen- that's the biggest mystery: How Do They Do That?

The Costumes of Sweeney Todd

(Isn't it incredible how a costume looks in real life compared to how it looks on screen? This takes lots of experience.)

Then and Now:Valentino and the Golddiggers of 1933

This is the first in what will hopefully be many posts illustrating the evolution of trends and design details and silhouettes. This is one of my favorite things to see- when something from the past pops right into the present with a seemingly fresh take.
Below is a sleeve that I could not take my eyes off of. I took about ten still frames of this suit:

This is from the Busby Berkely movie Golddiggers of 1933. This is the lovely Miss Ginger Rogers modeling this lovely suit that I'm going to imagine is a shade of pink. The designer of this movie is credited as being Orry-Kelly but only specifically "gowns." So I'm not quite sure that this goes under that heading. I would imagine this is from the Production Company's costume warehouse where a full-time wardrobe staff member picked this out somewhere one day with the pleasure of going home and saying he or she dressed the world-famous Miss Rogers but getting absolutely no credit for it whatsoever. So I will take this moment to personally thank this person- whoever you are, wherever you are! Your efforts have not gone unnoticed!

...a few months later I came across this great picture of Reese Witherspoon in Australia Harper's Bazaar:

It's so pretty! It's a Valentino Dress and Jacket. I'm sure this sleeve came up at least a few points during the 80s on Dallas on either Alexis or Krystal or both- but I dont have any pictures of those. (I'm looking)