A Visit to Theaterkunst, Germany’s Oldest and Biggest Costume Design House
What do Metropolis, Ben-Hur, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay all have in common? Their actors were outfitted, in full or in part, by a costume house in Berlin. And not just any costume house, but one that survived two world wars and Germany’s partitioning. It is now the country’s largest collection of historic ...
How Color Created Character in Brie Larson’s Unicorn Store
Captain Marvel aside, Brie Larson makes her feature-length directorial debut with Unicorn Store, now on Netflix. First screened at the Toronto Film Festival in September, the fantastical allegory written by Samantha McIntyre follows Kit (also played by Larson), a colorful art student who receives mysterious invitations to visit The Store where she’s granted owning the ...
Going to the Circus With Dumbo Costume Designer Colleen Atwood
Costume designer Colleen Atwood has made herself one of the most recognized costume designers in Hollywood. An Oscar-winner for Chicago, Memoirs of a Geisha, Alice in Wonderland, and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Atwood has been the designer of choice for director Tim Burton ever since she collaborated with him on Edward Scissorhands ...
Dressing Misfits, Robots & Superheroes With The Umbrella Academy‘s Costume Designer
Understandably, there’s been a lot of fan interest in the gargantuan prosthetic that Tom Harper wears for his portrayal of Luther Hargreeves, a.k.a. No. 1, in the well-received Netflix superhero series The Umbrella Academy. However, no one is emailing the show’s costume designer Christopher Hargadon about actually purchasing one. Hargadon is getting inquiries from fans ...
Getting Inspired With Black Panther‘s Oscar-Nominated Costume Designer Ruth E. Carter
*In the run-up to this Sunday’s Oscars telecast, we’re sharing some of our favorite interviews with nominees. Part of Black Panther costume designer Ruth E. Carter‘s many responsibilities included steeping the characters of the fictional world of Wakanda in a wardrobe that spoke to the real Africa, while retaining the mythic quality that the reclusive, technologically advanced nation required. ...
Oscar-Nominated Costume Designer Sandy Powell’s Magic Touch on Mary Poppins Returns
*In the run-up to this Sunday’s Oscars telecast, we’re sharing some of our favorite interviews with nominees. Three-time Oscar-winning costume designer Sandy Powell came to the production of Mary Poppins Returns with fond memories of the 1964 original, which was the first film she ever saw as a child. She was excited to be a part of creating the ...
Mary Queen of Scots‘ Oscar-Nominated Costume Designer Alexandra Byrne
*In the run-up to this Sunday’s Oscars telecast, we’re sharing some of our favorite interviews with nominees. Mary Queen of Scots is a gorgeous film to behold, with the dueling Queens looking period-perfect from head to toe. “You’ve got two queens, two powerful women, two women who have never met,” hair and makeup artist Jenny Shircore told us. ...
Oscar Watch: Mary Queen of Scots‘ Costume Designer Alexandra Byrne
Mary Queen of Scots is a gorgeous film to behold, with the dueling Queens looking period-perfect from head to toe. As the film’s hair and makeup artist Jenny Shircore told us, “You’ve got two queens, two powerful women, two women who have never met, who are yet influenced by each other’s beauty and power. They are ...
How James Baldwin Inspired If Beale Street Could Talk Costume Designer Caroline Eselin-Schaefer
In the beginning was the word, as set down by James Baldwin in his 1974 novel “If Beale Street Could Talk.” The movie adaptation from Moonlight auteur Barry Jenkins and his team drew on Baldwin’s text when it came to visualizing this story for the big screen. Costume designer Caroline Eselin-Schaefer says, “James Baldwin gave ...
Costume Designer Sandy Powell’s Magic Touch on Mary Poppins Returns
Three-time Oscar-winning costume designer Sandy Powell came to the production of Mary Poppins Returns with fond memories of the 1964 original, which was the first film she ever saw as a child. She was excited to be a part of creating the look of this new incarnation of the beloved nanny, especially the iconic arrival costume. She ...
Costume Designer Betsy Heimann Savors a Vintage Look in Green Book
Charming characters in beautiful clothes battle ugly Jim Crow racism in the opposites-attract period piece Green Book. Inspired by a true story, the movie follows sophisticated black pianist Don Shirley (Oscar-winner Mahershala Ali) and his earthy driver/valet/bodyguard Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen) as they forge a friendship traveling through the segregationist south on a concert tour ...
The Haunting of Hill House Costume Designer Explains Why Those Ghosts Give You Nightmares
TV’s Halloween hit of the year is undoubtedly The Haunting of Hill House. There are some major chills and surprises, but the addicting aspects of the series are the harrowing revelations that unravel among the Crain family. The unknown horrors that plague them across the years are terrifying but they grow even scarier when the ...
BlacKkKlansman Costume Designer Marci Rodgers on Dressing the Year’s Most Urgent Film
Costume designer Marci Rodgers was out of the country working on a movie when she got a call from Spike Lee. Rodgers and Lee worked together on his Netflix series (and adaptation from his feature film) She’s Gotta Have It, yet he was calling about a new project, a feature film based on an incredible true ...
The Meaning Behind the Emmy Nominated Fahrenheit 451 ‘Firemen’ Uniforms
Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 has become a gold standard among dystopian novels proving decade after decade the endurance of its message. Ramin Bahrani’s HBO adaptation explored the renewed relevance of the 65-year-old cautionary tale about the government sanctioned destruction of facts and ideas. With a mere 100-minute runtime, every frame had to communicate the rigid ...
How Politics Inspired the Costume Design of The First Purge
The Purge films have become a phenomenon of fear, hinging on the normalization of horrific acts. The first film premiered five years ago, and the franchise seems to have been a clairvoyant warning sign as political tensions struggle for the soul of our country. Playing to the celebratory nature of the event, SDCC fans were invited ...
Sorry to Bother You’s Costume Designer Deirdra Govan’s Vintage Vision
Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You is a revelation. It’s usually a cliché to say “you won’t see another film like it this year,” but you won’t see another film like it this year. Or next year. Or, likely, the year after that. There’s a reason Sorry to Bother You took years to make, even though everyone ...
Ant-Man and the Wasp‘s Costume Designer Explains Insect Couture
British costume designer Louise Frogley spent the first 35 years of her career focused on Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney movies like Traffic and Good Night, and Good Luck. In 2013 she got her first taste of the Marvel Cinematic Universe via Iron Man 3, followed by the re-booted Spider-Man: Homecoming. Now she’s taken on ...
Costume Designer Stephanie Maslansky on Bringing Harlem Style to Luke Cage
In the first season of Netflix’s adaption of the Marvel superhero comic Luke Cage, Luke, née Carl Lucas (Mike Colter) emerges from a quiet Harlem existence to fight his neighborhood’s most nefarious criminals. With inhuman strength and unbreakable skin, Luke is in a unique position to go head-to-head, or body-to-bullets, with local gangster Cornell “Cottonmouth” ...
How Superflys’ Costume Designer Curated the Sensational Look
Costume designer Antoinette Messam got hired on December 18 to costume the suave hustlers of Superfly and on January 19, cameras rolled in Atlanta. “It was like the fastest production ever!,” says the Jamaican-born designer. Getting up to speed in a hurry, Messam went “power-shopping” over the holidays in Toronto, where she loaded up on ...
Costume Designer Jane Petrie on the Royals Step Into Modernity in Season 2 of The Crown
Lushly shot, exquisitely produced, expensive and popular, Netflix’s The Crown is praised not just for its (mostly) accurate rendering of major and minor events in the history of Britain’s royal family, but for its credible portrayal of their homes and haunts and the clothes they wore there. The period costumes, executed in attentive, realistic detail ...
