Cue the flappers, the fringe, the beads and the bobs.
The Roaring ’20s are back in fashion — on the runways and on-screen.
It started in September at the spring 2012 fashion shows, with Ralph Lauren’s “Great Gatsby” gowns, Tory Burch’s sportswear inspired by Coco Chanel and 1920s Deauville, and Frida Giannini’s Art Deco black-and-gold fringed flapper dresses at Gucci.
Those clothes won’t be in stores for another month or so, and Baz Luhrmann’s film adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age novel “The Great Gatsby,” sure to be a costume extravaganza, isn’t due out until next Christmas.
But the trend has already hit Hollywood, with the films “Hugo” and “The Artist,” both of which are set in the late 1920s to early 1930s.
So why is that time period resonating in 2011?
Sandy Powell, the costume designer for “Hugo,” cites the popularity of HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire,” which is set in 1920. “It’s been pretty influential,” she says. “It’s funny how these things turn around and suddenly a certain look becomes fashionable and it’s in every film. It’s bizarre.”
When it comes to retro fashion, the 1920s look is “simple and sexy and romantic at the same time,” says Mark Bridges, costume designer for the silent film “The Artist.” “It’s easy to wear but exclusive in that you need to be slim. And because the shapes are so simple, they are a blank slate for embellishment. It covers all the bases one wants for a successful fashion moment.”
The 1920s were the beginning of the modern age in fashion, when women ditched their corsets, cut their hair and started wearing shorter, body-conscious dresses and skirts that allowed them the freedom to kick up their heels. It’s also when women started to turn to Hollywood for fashion cues.
Whereas “The Artist” is about Hollywood glamour, “Hugo” is about the everyday glamour of ordinary people. The film, based on Brian Selznick’s 2007 book “The Invention of Hugo Cabret,” tells the story of an orphan boy named Hugo (Asa Butterfield) living in a Paris train station, who unlocks the mystery of an abandoned automaton and discovers a forgotten filmmaker. His tale is intertwined with the stories of the everyday visitors to the train station — the florist, cafe owner, cafe patrons, bookseller and station manager.
“(Hugo) was set in 1931, but it really has the look and feel of Paris in the late 1920s,” says Powell, who scoured the Paris flea markets for inspiration.
Director Martin Scorsese “also had ‘The Lavender Hill Mob’ screened for me — the old 1951 Ealing comedy with Alec Guinness — and that was really about the level of stylization within the costumes for each of the characters,” she says. “Because, although this is about real people in real-life situations, everything is sort of seen through the eyes of a child, so you have to heighten it a little bit. Even the views of Paris are a little bit storybook, so I tried to do that with the costumes.”
This was Powell’s first 3-D film, and she found the medium enhanced her work. “You have to be careful that there’s no loose thread hanging — off a button or a cuff for example — or it’s going to look like a rope. But in general, 3-D makes things a lot more beautiful.”
“The Artist” puts ’20s fashion on display in black and white, which posed a different set of challenges for costume designer Bridges (“There Will Be Blood,” “Boogie Nights”).
The film takes place in 1927, and centers on silent movie star George Valenti (Jean Dujardin), who must cope with the arrival of talkies, and the possibility of being replaced by a new generation of talent.
“With costumes, you’re always trying to tell the story subliminally,” says Bridges, who was nominated for a Critic’s Choice award for his work on the film. “So in the medium of black and white, we used a lot of textures and high contrast when the characters were at their pinnacle and more monochromatic looks when they were down on their heels.”
Suiting the movie stars to their Hollywood roles
A movie doesn’t have to be jampacked with cinema style to have a memorable fashion moment or two, and in the course of screening the slate of holiday-season films, we found all kinds of clothes, accessories, hairstyles and makeup worth a mention. Los Angeles Times
“The Iron Lady”
The costumes in “The Iron Lady,” the unconventional biopic about former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher that opens in limited release Dec. 30, say a lot about political power dressing. Meryl Streep, who plays Thatcher, has nearly 40 costume changes in the film, and almost all of what she wears is Tory blue, a color the PM favored because it set her apart from a sea of men in gray suits.
“She used blue in all forms, from the most pastel and girlish to the most deep,” says the film’s costume designer, Consolata Boyle. “We used blue in a very deliberate way in the film, as a metaphor and a tool to convey Margaret’s emotions and her ideas.”
Early in her career, Thatcher takes advice from political consultants who tell her to lose her ultra-feminine, fussy style, particularly her hats. She agrees to all but one thing: “The pearls are nonnegotiable.” That double strand of pearls, a copy of Thatcher’s own, is one of many pieces of her jewelry re-created for the film. “She was a great collector. It’s such an iconic look she had with the pearls and the brooch on the shoulder,” Boyle says.
All of Streep’s costumes were handmade — from the pretty, pale blue suits her character wears early on to the sharper ones with defined waists and strong shoulders she wears later in her career.
There is evidence, she says, that Thatcher thought a lot about her clothes. During the 1982 Falklands War, for example, Thatcher wore a lot of bow-front blouses. “There was a mixture of femininity and strength in how she presented herself then.” Booth Moore
“My Week With Marilyn”
The transformation of Michelle Williams into a 30-year-old Marilyn Monroe was no small task. It required the actress to spend three hours a day in hair, makeup and wardrobe to look not like the heavy-lidded glamour girl with a crimson pout, but like the pared-down woman behind the icon.
“My Week With Marilyn” focuses on the tense working relationship between Sir Laurence Olivier and Monroe during the filming of the 1956 movie “The Prince and the Showgirl,” as well as on a budding friendship between the voluptuous actress and a young director’s assistant.
Though the film captures an “off-duty” side of Monroe, her wardrobe is still tailored. But it has an ease that draws a strong contrast to the constricting, sexy dresses we’re used to on her. Costume designer Jill Taylor used ladylike pieces including ivory silk button-down blouses, camel-colored pencil skirts and classic trench coats punctuated by chiffon head scarves and oversized sunglasses. All are worn with an air of insouciance that brings out a more vulnerable and down-to-earth side of Monroe.
Jenny Shircore designed Williams’ makeup to look like no-makeup makeup. Shircore used shadowing and contouring to reshape the actress’ face to appear less round and longer, like Monroe’s.
“She never lost the mole, the shape of the eyebrows or the bow-shaped lip,” Shircore says. “We pinpointed features on Michelle that, no matter if she was doing a scene where she was crying at home or on the movie set, reminded us that this is indeed Marilyn Monroe.” Melissa Magsaysay
“War Horse”
Have you ever heard of an equine makeup artist? Neither had I, until I read the production notes for “War Horse,” which opens Christmas Day. But it makes sense. Steven Spielberg’s epic film is about a young Englishman named Albert (Jeremy Irvine), who enlists in World War I after his beloved horse Joey is sold into cavalry, and the horse’s journey through war-torn Europe. The cast of horses was every bit as important as the cast of humans.
There were 12 horses that played Joey, each one trained to do a different action, and they all had to look identical with four white socks and a white “star” on the forehead. That’s where equine makeup artist Charlie Rogers came in. Apparently, it took 45 minutes to get each horse into makeup.
With all the battle scenes in the film — based on Michael Morpurgo’s 1982 novel “War Horse,” which was adapted into a stage play in 2007 — making costumes was an enormous task for Joanna Johnston. She fashioned 1,400 military uniforms for British and German soldiers.
The Imperial War Museums in London turned out to be an invaluable resource for photographic research, as well as every type of clothing, from helmets to boots. “We had to hit all the right looks for the right dates, and everything had to be aged,” Johnston says. And she had only eight weeks to do it.
She even helped some of the actors get into character by sewing good luck charms on the insides of their uniforms, something many soldiers did during World War I.
Another piece of the costume puzzle was wardrobing Albert’s rural farm family, including his mother, Rose, (Emily Watson). Johnston enhanced the simplicity and the texture of their costumes to match their environs in the Devon countryside. Booth Moore
