Ann Roth began with a few instructions: “Do NOT call me amazing. Do NOT call me a 91-year-old legend. Do NOT call me the oldest person in the ‘Barbie’ movie.” I had driven four hours through a biblical downpour to interview the revered costume designer. After a hike down a dark path through the woods to an 18th-century house, I felt as though I were opening the Narnia wardrobe and entering a whimsical fantasy world.
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Beads and embellishments were perhaps mankind’s first indulgent luxury…
WWD: “Wednesday,” “White Lotus,” “Euphoria,” and “Stranger Things” made costume designers the influencers of 2022.
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What do Beyoncé, cowboys, and Godzilla have in common? Other than whopping box office returns, the answer is the distinctive and innovative costumes of Sharen Davis. Her costume design moves seamlessly between genres, from Westerns to science fiction, and every decade of the 20th century. Davis deals in hyperbole like it’s an everyday language. She took Django (Jamie Foxx) from chains and rags to Calvin Candie’s (Leonardo DiCaprio) burgundy suit in a move so brash that the movie itself stops to take a moment and appreciate it. Beyoncé time traveled right into her glittering gowns in Dreamgirls. She took Westworld from cowboys to samurai to the not-too-distant future.
In an industry plagued by pay inequity and gender bias, it’s no surprise that costume designers are victims of the same issues. “The majority of costume designers are women, and they are ignored,” says Perez, who’s worked as a costume designer on shows like The Mindy Project. “[The industry] thinking is, ‘Well, it’s just shopping, my wife can do that.’”
Tales of crime, espionage, and intrigue are both timeless and irresistible. Characters brought to life in the ’30s and ’40s became archetypes of cinema that still resonate today. We spoke to costume designers Catherine Adair, Betsy Heimann, and Justine Seymour about their recent period projects set in the genre-defining time between the two World Wars.
The costume design is a glorious slow burn with fashion explosions set on high. Courts was thrilled to highlight quite a few Black designers including Andrea Iyamah, Diarrablu, Johnny Nelson Jewelry, Kahlana Barfield, and Sammy B. Courts says, “I always say I stand on the shoulders of my team because they are the ones that push me forward.”
At the beginning of the period of samurai culture in Japan that would influence everything from animation to spaghetti westerns, a lone Englishman aboard a derelict Dutch privateer ship landed in Izu and became enmeshed in the intrigue that would usher in the Edo Shogunate. The real-life Tokugawa engaged in a deadly game of wits for a kingdom without a crown in a court without a throne. In 1979 James Clavell published a fictionalized version of that historical period with names changed and a 1980s miniseries adaptation of his novel captured a global audience and garnered the highest Nielsen rating to date for NBC.