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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Cruella's best looks: A "complete" ranking

by Cláudio Alves

If there were any doubts that Jenny Beavan is a costume design goddess, Disney's latest live-action remake/villain origin story proves it beyond any reasonable doubt. Unencumbered by the financial restraints inherent to independent cinema, Beavan serves up an orgiastic ecstasy of excess and punk rock fashion pastiche. According to interviews, she conceived 47 different costumes for Emma Stone's redeemed villainess, making Cruella the most-dressed movie of the year. It's also a good contender for the title of best-dressed. It's fair to say that an Oscar nomination is all but guaranteed. However, since the 94th Academy Awards are still nearly ten months away, let's focus on other matters.

Specifically, let's delve deep into the matter of Emma Stone's outlandish outfits and decide which are her grandest, most devilishly glamorous looks…

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93rd Academy Awards: 10 Best-dressed

by Cláudio Alves

After an awards season full of Zoom ceremonies and no red carpets to speak off, Oscar night was a breath of fresh air. While most stars have spent the past few months attending shows from their homes, that didn't mean there wasn't fashion to appreciate. However, there's something special about the spectacle of the red carpet, something ineffably magical. With that in mind, I decided to explore, list, and rank the best looks of the night. From ingenues to aged thespians, male provocateurs, glamorous goddesses, there was much to appreciate. 

First, though, I'd like to make an honorable mention… 

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The animated couture of "Over the Moon"

by Cláudio Alves

As computer animation evolves, the making of these features becomes ever more complex. A few decades ago, it might have seemed silly to have cinematographers collaborating with cartoon filmmakers, but that's no longer the case. Roger Deakins, for instance, had a crucial part in making the How to Train Your Dragon movies look the way they did. The same goes for costume design.

Once upon a time, what an animated figure wore was, more or less, inseparable from character design and you rarely had a specific costume department in such productions. With films like Disney's Frozen and Laika's gigantic stop-motion projects, there's increasing space for costume designers in the making of animated movies. The latest example is Netflix's Over the Moon…

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Horror Costuming: Stoker

by Cláudio Alves

We carry part of our parents with us at all times. Whether through the body their genetics defined, or the mind molded and perchance scarred by their influence, their absence, their love, we are made in their image. Some might rejoice in that intrinsic truth, others resent it. Park Chan-wook's only English-language feature, Stoker, understands this with caustic assuredness. From its opening salvos, the script and images call attention to matters of blood and descendence, materializing the familial bonds through costume design…

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