Costume design is an elusive art in film, where the correct
clothing is essential to the audience’s abandonment of
reality for two hours and buying into the characters created on the
silver screen.
To honor costume designers whose work is essential yet sometimes
overlooked, the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising holds
an annual exhibit displaying costumes from movies released during
the previous year. The Art of Motion Picture Costume Design
Exhibition consistently chooses a blend of obviously spectacular to
sorely underrated designs. This year’s exhibit, on display
through April 8 at the FIDM Museum Galleries, includes all five
Oscar nominees for Best Costume Design.
Some evidence of costumes’ importance in films is shown
through the Academy Award nominations, where three of the five
nominations for Best Picture are also nominated for Best Costume
Design. Judianna Makovsky, an Oscar nominee for
“Seabiscuit” and whose credits include
“Pleasantville” and “Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer’s Stone,” stresses the importance of
“invisible” costuming, especially for period films.
“The actor has to feel comfortable in the clothes. In (a
period film) particularly, you don’t want to notice (the
costume). Knowing that (the filmmakers) were using real footage
(from 1938), if it jumped from a costume to a real garment on film,
that would be a disaster,” said Makovsky as she motioned
towards the costume display of Red Pollard’s (Tobey Maguire)
horse racing ensemble she designed for
“Seabiscuit.”
Though a hearty portion of the exhibit displays meticulously
accurate period film costumes, there are a fair amount
of pieces that blend past clothing with fantasy, such as
Soggybottom’s yellow-checkered circus outfit with a trap-door
in “Big Fish.” Contemporary clothing, such as Bob
Harris’ (Bill Murray) inside-out orange camouflage T-shirt
from “Lost In Translation,” is equally magnificent in
its own way.
Mona May, who designed costumes for “The Haunted
Mansion” and is best known for “Clueless,”
prefers comedy costuming.
“I love making fun of life a little bit. You don’t
show the reality; you create a hyper world of things,” said
May of the ultra-girly looks she designed for
“Clueless” during the casually-styled grunge era.
An expert in creating both fantasy and reality, and the star of
the gallery, Ngila Dickson garnered two Academy Award nominations
for her work on “The Last Samurai” and “The Lord
of the Rings: The Return of the King” (a co-nomination with
Richard Taylor).
When asked about her state of mind a week after the nominations
were announced, she still considered herself “a stunned
bunny.” On display at the gallery are samples of her work
from “The Lord of the Rings,” including the beautifully
detailed dress and robe of elf queen Galadriel (Cate Blanchett),
with quilt-like embroidery stitched in shiny thread for the angelic
robe, beading sewed onto the finest fabric for the dress, and a
custom-made mother of pearl necklace. The cost of the materials
alone is unknown, but Dickson wouldn’t even attempt to put a
price on it.
“There’s so much handwork in those costumes, never
mind the cost of the fabrics,” she said. “The amount of
human hours is quite staggering.”
For “The Last Samurai” display, Dickson’s
costumes are surrounded with a little ambiance, as
Katsumoto’s (Ken Watanabe) battle costume and Nathan
Algren’s (Tom Cruise) Western attire are framed around a wood
and screen prop from the set of the movie. The prop component of
the exhibit has been present in previous years, but never to the
extent of the current installation. Other exhibits with a prop
component include heavy tapestry and towering rusty statues from
“The Haunted Mansion” and rough textiles from
“The Missing.”
“Instead of just having costumes (in the case of
“Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black
Pearl”), we have rifles, pistols, the ladders, the wine
barrels and the booty. Even though the dresses can all stand on
their own, the props are another media as a learning tool for our
students and the community,” said Robert Nelson, director of
the FIDM Museum and Galleries.
Props may heighten the mood, but the focus will always remain on
the costumes and, equally important, the characters who embody
them. Dickson’s costumes have become a physical manifestation
of the characters for the cult following of “The Lord of the
Rings” trilogy, where knock-offs of her designs are worn by
fans.
“It’s nice to think that they are so inspired by a
film that they want to replicate it,” said Dickson. “I
absolutely love it because they are having so much fun.”
The Art of Motion Picture Costume Design Exhibition, located
at 919 South Grand Ave. in Los Angeles, is free to the public. Call
(213) 624-1200, ext. 2224 for more information.