Spencer: Dressing an Icon

by Cláudio Alves

Spencer is proving itself a divisive picture. Even among The Film Experience team, some hate it, and some love it. Still, reading through plenty of negative reviews, one can find some elements capable of surviving the criticism, joining the two factions of the discourse around Spencer. So far, the costumes seem to be earning quasi-unanimous praise. Two-time Academy Award winner Jacqueline Durran is a beloved artist, capable of facing the challenge of dressing an icon with obstinate virtuosity. Evoking the ghost of Princess Diana, or rather a stylistic impression of her, the designer has created one of the most ravishing wardrobes of the cinematic year, a masterpiece of sartorial indulgence that befits the movie's melodramatic verve…

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Dune: Top 10 Best Costumes

by Cláudio Alves

Dune feels more like a period movie than a sci-fi extravaganza as fashioned by costume designers Jacqueline West and Bob Morgan. West, who studied Art History, has described the aesthetic she and Morgan conceived as "mod-ieval, looking to the past for the distant future." While the story takes us to a faraway tomorrow, the world doesn't look new. Instead, it feels ancient, used-up before we ever laid eyes on it, sand-blasted but not rotten like the Lynch movie. Stuck in feudalistic pageantry and a political system that squashes the individual under imperial rule, Dune is an anachronism expanded to the monumentality of a space opera. An incredibly ambitious project, the movie deserves applause for its scale and, indeed, its costumes. 

Even the most negligible extra in the background of scenes is splendidly dressed, their ensembles as thought-through as the hero costumes. With that in mind, I decided to highlight this sartorial glory by re-watching the flick ins search of its best looks, be they worn by movie stars or background actors. There's so much to admire…

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Horror Costuming: Black Swan (2010)

by Cláudio Alves

Unintentionally, this year's Horror Costuming miniseries has featured a lot of designers' partnerships. In both Hellraiser and The Cell, we explored how one person created a fantasy world while another cared for the mundane existence and its subtler evils. Those films showed how exemplary collaboration could produce unforgettable movie wardrobes. Now, with Black Swan, we arrive at a more disharmonious sort of alliance, one that fell apart after the fact, as the media celebrated some designers' work while ignoring the other, and the awards bodies did the reverse. It's a pity how much the controversy came to dominate conversations on the film's costumes. But, beyond the acrimony and scandal, Black Swan is a superbly designed horror movie whose costumes deserve analysis, applause, awards too…

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Horror Costuming: The Cell (2000)

by Cláudio Alves

Last year, when exploring the wonders of horror costuming, I sang the praises of Eiko Ishioka's Oscar-winning Dracula designs, a heady mixture of Nipponic fantasy and Victorian fashion. While that's a cinematic wardrobe for the ages, it's fair to say Eiko's most crucial big-screen collaboration wasn't with Francis Ford Coppola. Instead, that would be her decades-long teaming with Tarsem Singh. Indeed, the Japanese artist's work with the Indian director became so intrinsic to his filmography that she could be considered a co-author of those movies. Her vision is vital to their final form. So much so that, after her death, Tarsem's cinema lost some of its spark. He's yet to return to the visual heights he had achieved with Eiko. Of the four features they did together, The Cell's the only adventure in the horror genre, a nightmarish plunge into a serial killer's psyche…

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Horror Costuming: The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

by Cláudio Alves

Jonathan Demme's horror masterpiece, the only film in the genre to win the Best Picture Oscar, has been written about ad nauseam since its release. And yet, some elements of The Silence of the Lambs remain under-discussed. It would seem impossible, but such is the richness of this feature. Take its design, iconic but understated enough to be taken for granted. The costumes are especially deserving of attention, going way beyond Lecter's mask and Buffalo Bill's world of human skin suits. They were designed by Colleen Atwood, a future favorite of the Academy, and represent an oft-forgotten part of her artistry - the ability to ground grotesquerie in reality and use clothing to define the relationships between people…

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