Costume Design

Jane Eyre
Michael O’Connor won an Academy
Award for costumes in the
2009 film The Duchess. He received
his second nomination
this year for another period drama,
Jane Eyre, directed by Cary
Fukunaga. Inspired by Charlotte
Bronte’s classic, the film is about
Jane (Mia Wasikowska), an orphan
ill-treated by her aunt, who
becomes a governess to the
ward of Mr Rochester (Michael
Fassbender), and later falls in
love with her employer.
Unlike in The Duchess, where
O’Connor had to dress up the ultra
fashionable duchess of Devonshire
(played by Kiera Knightly)
in hats and elaborate dresses
of the Georgian era, Jane Eyre is
about a governess in the Victorian
period. What works in O’Connor’s
favour is how natural it all
looks — Wasikowska’s black
dresses with white collars look
like they’ve been inspired by a
nun’s habit, Fassbender looks
comfortable in knee-length
shirts with elaborate collars and
high-waist gabardines, and
Amelia Clarkson, who plays the
young Jane, makes the layers of
petticoats under her dress look
normal.

Anonymous
Enough films have been set in
Elizabethan England for one to
get a clear visual of what life was
like for royals, peasants, the
bourgeois and the artists. For the
most part, costume designers
seem to have extensively
researched the wardrobe of the
era, effectively capturing the
fashionably vast divide between
the classes.
Even a film like Anonymous —
despite scenes of Elizabeth
I wantonly performing fellatio,
and screaming unbecomingly,
“Aaaaghh! But I love him!” — can
be a decent reference for costumes.
The film, about whether or
not literature’s icon William
Shakespeare wrote the works he
is credited with, is almost worth
watching for the costumes alone.
The plain gown held by a string
around the bodice that the queen
wears in her bedchambers, for instance,
or the neck ruffle of her
ministers, noblemen in armour,
each with his own coat of arms,
or the earl’s cape draped deliberately
yet casually over one shoulder,
are designed to belong the
era, while also distinguishing
themselves from other films set in
the seventeenth century.

W.E.
W.E., Madonna’s second directorial
venture, has been panned by
the critics and rightly so. The film
is about Wallis Simpson, an
American socialite who falls in
love with the prince and soon to
be King of England, Edward VIII,
who in turn abdicated the throne
to marry the divorcee.
WE is a well-staged film. It looks
beautiful, and as every period
piece set in the upper echelons
of society, the costumes are fabulous.
Arianne Philips designed
the costumes, for which the film
has gotten an Oscar nomination.
I guess when you’re Madonna
it’s not difficult to get designers
like Philips, John Galliano and
Issa to do costumes for your film
and get Pierre Cartier to design
your jewels. Unfortunately no
matter how much polish you put
on the shoe, if it’s not a well
stitched it’s bound to come
apart. Sadly, that’s the fate WE
suffers.