Drag Race: "What a Way To Go!"

There's so much to say which is perhaps why I never say it.  And why I'll let you say it instead since I gave up trying to write up my thoughts each week (too many thoughts!) COMMENT PARTY! You're invited. Bring your own comments.

Ben's farewell at the Glitter BallAnd the predicted winner is... Adore (love that bitch) though my true heart belongs to Bianca

Ben de la Creme at least understood filling the entire workroom mirror with lipstick brain vomit when he departed last week leaving only four... and then three Monday night (Adore, Bianca, and Courtney) to compete for the crown tiara of America's Next Drag Superstar.  

But what a way to go... and Ben even referenced What a Way To Go! (1964) at one point (though I regret to inform that I couldn't find it to prove it in screencap form) before sashaying away. Which made her exit all the more painful since a queen who can reference old movies and has a grasp of cultural history to draw from beyond current reality tv and Beyoncé (the only two things the lesser queens seem to "get" each season) is always a better queen for it. I still cringe thinking of that old episode where even drag queens didn't know what Grey Gardens (1975) was -- and this was even after the Emmy & Globe winning Jessica Lange and Drew Barry more version in 2009 -- and chastised Jinkx for choosing an "obscure" celebrity to riff on. RuPaul didn't dress them down for it but justice in the end because guess who won the whole season. 

My point is two-fold and as yet unexpressed. See how I can't focus with this show?

1) The last couple of episodes have been curiously muted and I hope the show finds a way to put a little pep back into its step when it goes away again at the finale and

2) there are surely few better films to draw inspiration from if you're a man in a dress than What a Way To Go!. Consider Miss Shirley Maclaine in the Oscar nominated costumes by Moss Mabry and Edith Head in gif form after the jump... if you dare...

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Edith Head, Googled

I miss the Google Doodle's that were interactive. Sigh. The glory days that evaporated so very recently. But today's honoree is a rare TFE appropriate treat. Google's banner is honoring Edith Head, 8 time Best Costume Design Oscar winner on her 116th birthday.

She won her Oscars for The Heiress (1950), Samson and Delilah (1951), All About Eve (1951), A Place in the Sun (1952), Roman Holiday (1954), Sabrina (1955), The Facts of Life (1961) and The Sting (1974) but the nominations were practically endless. For comparison's sake, today's reigning costume queens Sandy Powell and Colleen Atwood have but 10 nominations and 3 wins each -- stunning track records unless you place them next to Edith's 35 & 8!

My favorite modern tribute to Edith Head's costuming dominance, though, is still "Edna Mode" from The Incredibles (2004). The resemblance being perfectly uncanny, though Edith would still tower over her mini-me Edna at 5' feet 1½

This is as good a time as any to tell you that TFE will be debuting a new series this week "Threads" wherein we'll start giving Costume Design its (weekly) due. We'll begin with 82 year old Patricia Norris who after a longish absence from the movies is back with 12 Years a Slave.

From the Set to the Runway: Hepburn, Dunaway... Malick?

This week I had the pleasure of attending a lecture at the Morgan Library and Museum. I can't recall the last time I went to a lecture so I felt very Schlegel Sisters from Howard's End (1992). The things people used to do for entertainment!

The lecture was actually more of a threeway discussion. The museum paired influential fashion historian Valerie Steele with famed designer Anna Sui (who turns out to be a movie buff) and Oscar nominated costume designer Deborah Nadoolman (Coming to America) whose credits include 80s hits like Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Three Amigos! (remember that one?) and even the "Thriller" music video! So herewith the tidbits I felt you'd enjoy most from the event.

Some actresses are not just movie stars, but fashion icons.

Faye Dunaway & Audrey Hepburn
The general gist of the event was in delineating what separates fashion from costume design and how costume design can but doesn't necessarily become fashion. Nadoolman suggests that it's a matter of "transference" and what's required is usually both a popular film and a character within the film that people want to be like in some way. That combination creates icons and icons influence fashion. Whether or not that happens, she argued, has little to do with good costuming which is about creating characters. For instance, Nadoolman said that one could argue that Audrey Hepburn's wardrobe in Breakfast at Tiffany's is actually bad costume design even though they're sensational dresses. What kind of a down and out call girl can afford those looks? Audrey Hepburn's before and after Paris looks in Sabrina were also discussed and it was interesting to hear Nadoolman tsk-tsking over Edith Head's oft misleading but admittedly savvy way with self-promotion. She designed Audrey's poor girl looks but the post Parisian fashions were not hers though of course Head was glad to accept another Oscar on behalf of them.

And yes that recent Black Swan controversy (Rodarte vs. Amy Westcott) was cited when they were discussing this.

Terrence Malick Inspires Fasion. Come again?
Anna Sui told the audience that behind every one of her collections, there is a movie. Sometimes it's not the principle influence but there are always movie images that inspire her. She referenced many films that have directly inspired whole lines including, recently, Goya's Ghost and one that I wasn't familiar with at all called Beau Brummell (1954) -- has anyone seen that?

Days of Heaven inspired an Anna Sui collection

She also talked about Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven (1978). Sui is a huge fan of the film but she finds it so tragic that when she was designing a particular collection and using the film as her chief inspiration, she watched it countless times but only with the sound off! She used material like rubberized wheat (?) and overdyed all the textiles to get that ethereal twilight Days of Heaven feel.

The Body. The Torso. The Face.
When asked to address the differences between designing for stage, film and television, Nadoolman explained that it's all a question of scale and volume. In theater you're designing for the body "you're painting with a large brush". In film you're concentrating on the waist up. For television it's all about the close-up.

Interestingly two women in the crowd who designed for theater took umbrage at the notion that they didn't have to worry about the fine detailing since their clothes are seen only from a distance.

Marie Antoinette
The three fashionistas on stage really got into the discussion of Sofia Coppola's misunderstood 2006 film. Nadoolman told a great story about three-time Oscar winning costume designer Milena Canonero calling her in a panic from France...

We're doing Marie Antoinette and Kirsten Dunst has refused to wear wigs. How do you do Marie Antoinette without wigs?!?

Most costume design, Nadoolman stated, is not truly period accurate even if it appears to be. There are usually conscious choices made to change up period fashions, usually to make the characters more beautiful to modern audiences or to please a specific star or because the director is going for a specific mood or palette. Real gowns from Marie Antoinette's day, for example, were made of heavier upholstery-like material but Sofia's instructions to Canonero were that she wanted the actresses to "float" so light tissue tafetta was used. As for the color and the floating effect, her instructions were as follows:

I would like them to be like a plate of meringues."

It worked. Yum yum.