The MET Gala meets the Movies

by Cláudio Alves

MIDSOMMAR (2018) Ari AsterThis Spring, the Costume Institute at the MET is putting on an exhibition titled "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion." It's all about garments that, through the passage of time, have degraded or become too fragile to wear and exhibit by traditional means. They are slumbering, but through technological wizardry and museum magic, one hopes to breathe new life into them. From pepper ghosts to glass coffins, replicas, and immersive soundscapes, the MET will deliver visions of the fashioned ephemeral cataloged through an appeal to nature. The exhibit has three elemental parts– earth, air, and water –underlining the connective tissue between the pieces and the natural world, where decay is an essential part of existence. In some ways, it's a look at notions of impermanence through fashion.

Fittingly, this year's MET Gala has a dress code defined as "The Garden of Time," a novel by J.G. Ballard that considers similar themes. However, because stylists and celebrities are literal to a fault, this has resulted in florals and flowers as far as the eye can see – the red carpet turned into a Midsommar cosplay convention. If you're dissatisfied with the offer, why not scratch that sartorial itch through cinema? Here are some possibilities…

DANGEROUS LIAISONS (1988) Stephen Frears

When reflecting on the exhibition theme and red-carpet dress code, costume design that's too fragile to be worn beyond the plateau immediately comes to mind. For example, did you know that, for Dangerous Liaisons, designer James Acheson worked with vintage fabrics? Some were so delicate that his creations broke apart during the shoot. In interviews, Glenn Close, who keeps all her costumes as part of the contract, has expressed sadness that some of her favorite Madame de Merteuil looks didn't even make it to the finished film. Shattered silks and vintage lace couldn't withstand the wear and tear of the shoot. 

It's a fascinating notion, as if trying to reproduce the past is bound to fail, for material verisimilitude clashes with the reality of decay. Acheson is a costume design genius, by the way, and he deservedly won the first of three Oscars for this film. Moreover, not all the pieces were museum-quality constructions that would collapse under stress. The white robe à la française Merteuil wears to declare "war" on her erstwhile lover, Valmont, was famously repurposed by Madonna. She wore it to perform "Vogue" on live TV, and, more recently, Bob the Drag Queen modeled the piece or an excellent replica as part of the singer's Celebration Tour.

ATONEMENT (2007) Joe Wright

But not every instance of delicate costuming correlates with an adherence to historical accuracy. Sometimes, the opposite is true. Consider Jacqueline Durran's designs for Atonement, a narrative primarily set in the 1930s and 40s whose characters range from glamorous dilettantes to moribund soldiers. The phantasmagoria suggested by diaphanous fabrics on Juno Temple and little Saoirse Ronan might seem most appropriate for the "Sleeping Beauties" theme, but those aren't the garments that kept disintegrating during the shoot. Instead, it was Keira Knightley's iconic green dress, of which multiples had to be made. Durran used a laser-cutting technique to get the bow motif on the bodice, making it flimsy beyond belief.

At any given moment, one almost senses that the dress will break apart and reveal the body beneath. Not only is the layered skirt littered with juxtaposed splits that let legs slip forth, the fabric itself is always on the verge of nothingness. It makes it more erotic while also imbibing Knightley's image in an idea of ephemera. The dress is easily destroyed like the love story and lives at Atonement's center. Other films make similar provocations, often more literally than this doomed romance. My mind wanders to Derek Jarman and his love for ghostly women whose curated images are frequently mid-ruin. I remember a displaced queen in Jubilee, The Tempest's Miranda, who looks like a shipwreck herself, or a bridal Tilda Swinton tearing her own dress apart in The Last of England.

THE TEMPEST (1979) Derek Jarman

Not that the breakage of costume needs to happen on screen to be worthy of one's attention. Often, signs of aging give the frame a sense of time, of lives lived beyond the narrative frame. 

It happens a lot in the films dressed by Jenny Beavan and John Bright, thanks to their love for extant garments and recycled costumes. Think of Helena Bonham Carter in a cornflower blue frock whose fabric has been bleached by sunlight in A Room with a View. Only when she walks can we spy a richer shade hidden beneath outer layers. Another example with the same actress leads us to Miss Havisham from Great Expectations, her démodé wedding fashions - inspired by McQueen's oyster dress - turned to a temple of rot long before the camera finds them. In that case, the garment's life is a cinematic construct rather than a reality. It's manufactured decay and the passage of time made costume.

PHANTOM THREAD (2017) Paul Thomas Anderson

Then there's that awful wedding gown Reynolds Woodcock concocts in Phantom Thread, a misbegotten pièce de resistance that can't survive its creator's fall. Watching an army of seamstresses deconstruct and remake the torn lace is a quiet spectacle that makes the audience keenly aware of the material properties at hand. It makes the viewer ponder how these works of art can be so easily made into unwearable shreds. Indeed, because of such realities, lace could be an excellent material to explore this MET Gala. It's a dainty thing, so easily torn or yellowed by sunlight, discolored by contact with the skin, or simply distorted by its own weight. Oh yes, lace is a sleeping beauty, alright.

PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK (1975) Peter Weir
So many titles come to mind when pondering the qualities of lace in cinema and fashion. Some of them are historical pieces, reconstructions of a lost time when lingerie dresses were all the rage with their thin materials and flowery forms, intersected with lace inserts. The mystery of Picnic at Hanging Rock beckons with its Edwardian fashions, and so does, in its own way, the hallucination that is House of Tolerance. The conceptual backbone of Julie Dash's Daughters of the Dust evokes the exhibition's ideas of reawakening a dormant past, manifesting them in text and fashion alike. So haunting are those images that they persist in the collective imagination. Just look at Beyoncé's Lemonade.

DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST (1991) Julie Dash

No talk of Edwardian lace and decay is complete without a detour into Visconti's Death in Venice, where the purity of white cloth seems to pulsate with the promise of soiling and dirt. Whether sweat or bile, those fragile costumes will be marred. Then again, this entire post could be dedicated to classic Italian cinema, those celluloid dreams dressed by Piero Tosi, Danilo Donati, Gabriella Pescucci, and so many others, so suffused with tactility we can practically feel the image on our fingertips. It's Death in Venice, and it's an archaic Medea, the velvet bound to lose its pile in Pasolini's Trilogy of Life, Wertmüller's historical debauchery, Fellini's decrepit Casanova and the veiled gorgons of countless other movies bearing his name.

THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY (1996) Jane Campion

Veils would have been a good MET Gala choice, the more diaphanous the better, for when everything else remains, such pieces tend to disintegrate. One can easily imagine Barbara Hershey's schemer from The Portrait of a Lady existing in museums through her clothing, ghosts of a tormented life. But those beautiful veils of hers? They'd likely have been lost, netted flowers unmoored from the garments they should adorn. An alternative would be to render those fragile materials in sturdier stuff. That's what Massimo Cantini Parrini did in Tale of Tales, substituting lace for metalwork. Somehow, that gesture only accentuates frailty. If not the garments, then its wearers since their bodies will rot long before their metal vestments turn to dust.

TALE OF TALES (2015) Matteo Garrone

Horror like Tale of Tales is a good place to discover how the MET exhibit's themes can manifest and materialize. After all, there might not be a more dress-code-appropriate feat of costume design than Crimson Peak, where natural motifs blossom through beautiful garments like a garden of death. Mia Wasikowska is a ray of sunshine with butterflies upon her figure, but she's quickly diminished by the oppression of a haunted house and cursed lineage. The flowers embroidered in her clothes start to look embalmed, her body looking frailer because of oversized sleeves and transparencies. She's got nothing on Jessica Chastain, however. That baddie enters the film on a pool of blood-like silk and wears decay like it's a second skin - a fashion icon if there ever was one.

SLEEPY HOLLOW (1999) Tim Burton

Costume designer Colleen Atwood is an expert at creating such visions, be it in horror or other settings. For the more classical stuff, you've got Sweeney Todd or Sleepy Hollow. But the same can be said of less straightforward nightmares, like the one she fashioned for Charlize Theron in Snow White and the Hunstman. As Queen Ravena, the Oscar-winner is often adorned in natural materials and imagery, organic matter that brings forth notions of death. Bird skulls dipped in silver serve as jewelry, crow and cockerel feathers form great big cloaks, while mismatched bones can form the collar for a bridal queen. Atwood even envisioned a dress decorated with beetle wings, but that masterpiece was lost in a deleted scene. I guess we'll always have the bug couture Jenny Beavan made for Cruella. 

THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE (2005) Andrew Adamson

Speaking of iconic villains, Tilda Swinton is perfectly on theme as the White Witch from the first Chronicles of Narnia movie. Designer Isis Mussenden imagined her outfits as a semi-organic piece of magic, connected to the land yet also adversarial to it. To invoke such outré concepts, she used webs of cotton and open fibers juxtaposed, coming up with materials that look more like a fungus spread than fabric. As the movie advances, the snowy regality melts into spring, losing volume and its perfect whiteness, furs gaining spots of brown as the witch thaws. Ngila Dickson had similar ideas for Galadriel in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, though less evil or decaying. Rather than a beacon of malevolence, Cate Blanchett would be light made flesh, hope in billowy sleeves.

THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE (2013) Francis Lawrence

Oh, I could go on forever. Countless examples come to mind – the dress Kate Winslet wears while the Titanic sinks, the furs of The Revenant, the century-hopping fashions of Orlando, or the archeological costume design of The Northman – but I have to stop at some point. One can go extremely specific and even highlight the McQueen designs worn by Elizabeth Banks in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, one of which will be part of the exhibit. Still, as the last cinematic companions to this year's MET Gala, I propose a pair of recent titles. There's Poor Things, where Bella Baxter out-dresses every celebrity on the museum stairs, wearing sleeves like mollusks and other cross-breeds of fashion with biology. Finally, El Conde, where a vampiric Pinochet has his own collection of decaying garments. To reawaken Marie Antoinette, he puts her clothes on another body, but blood soon spills, because mortality is unavoidable even for the well-dressed undead. And darling, that's fashion!

What other films and film costumes come to mind when you think about fashion reawakened and the gardens of time?

Comments

[Antônio]

Not sure if it fits the theme but what comes to my mind is the impressive Lisa Marie as Martian Girl in Mars Attacks! It’s the ultimate stepford wife yet modern enough, with wind motifs and that weird/unnatural sexy way she moves. I too remember Sabine Devieilhe wearing a similar outfit, wig and all, in her rendition of the doll song from Tales of Hoffman onstage. I can say it’s my drag queen/halloween dream, and I could totally wear this if I was famous enough to be in the Met Gala!