In the last few years the film and fashion connection has become a constant obsession of many people working in the fashion industry.
Quite a few fashion designers and fashion houses recently opted to showcase their collections via films, while online magazines now dedicate entire sections to videos connected with fashion.
The latest to join in has been W Magazine that recently re-launched its site including a section entitled "Fashion on Film" that currently features runway show videos, Gareth Pugh's new film previewed at the Pitti and the YSL commercial shot by fashion photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin.
I must admit that, since my educational background is a strange kind of mixture of film, literature, costume design and tailoring, I tend to be more interested and fascinated by those costume designers who actually had an impact on fashion, influencing with their work for the big screen many contemporary fashion designers. One of them is definitely award-winning costume designer Theoni V. Aldredge, who died on Friday.
Born in Greece in 1922, Theoni Athanasiou decided to become a costume designer after seeing Gabriel Pascal’s Caesar and Cleopatra (1945).
After moving to the States she studied theatre at the Goodman School of Drama and at the Art Institute of Chicago and married in 1953 Tom Aldredge.
Though she debuted in costume design in 1950, her big break came when she was hired to work on Tennessee Williams' "Sweet Bird of Youth" in a 1959 production directed by Elia Kazan.
From then on she moved from production to production, creating costumes for over 300 stage productions and 40 feature films, including Network (1976), Ghostbusters (1984), Moonstruck (1987) and The First Wives Club (1996).
Throughout her career, spanning from the late ‘50s to the ‘90s, she designed costumes for famous shows such as "A Chorus Line" (she came up with the iconic golden tuxedos of the final number that symbolised an exuberant celebratory mood), "Dreamgirls", "The Rink” and "42nd Street", and won an Oscar and a BAFTA in 1975 for the costumes in Jack Clayton’s The Great Gatsby, starring Robert Redford (as Jay Gatsby) and Mia Farrow (as Daisy Buchanan), and three Tony awards for "Barnum", "Annie" and "La Cage aux Folles".
Her creations perfectly mirrored the psychological conditions of the various characters, expressing the personality of the performers and influencing their actions.
She was famous for her innovations, technical skills and versatility that allowed her to create costumes for the stage, the opera, television shows and the big screen becoming later on also the principal designer for Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival.
Aldredge influenced through her work quite a few fashion designers: Robert Redford's white suits, and Mia Farrow's drop-waist dresses inspired for example Ralph Lauren (have a look at this clip and enjoy spotting the Ralph Lauren connections…), who assisted on the Gatsby set.
The film caused such a stir that the characters' wardrobe spawned a line of clothing adapted from the costumes and sold exclusively by Bloomingdale's and, when the studio held its gala premiere on March 27, 1974, people came dressed in flapper beads and feathers.
Three years after the Oscar, Aldredge designed the costumes for thriller The Eyes of Laura Mars, starring Faye Dunaway as a fashion photographer wearing a cape, split skirt and fedora.
The film influenced once again many designers, among them also Marios Schwab who referenced it in his collection for Halston (as highlighted in a previous post).
Even her trick of rubbing buff powder on the costumes (especially on the edges of the lapels) for Barry Sonnenfeld’s Addams Family Values (1993) to give the impression that everything the family was wearing was old and dusty, became popular with some designers who added traces of dust and chalk prints on their garments.
Since the '70s are one of the main inspirations for the Spring/Summer 2011 collections and since this decade was definitely the best in Aldridge's career, you can bet we will definitely be able to spot further references and connections between the late costume designer and fashion.
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It’s excellent site, I was looking for something like this.
Posted by: Boutique Website Design | May 10, 2011 at 10:17 AM
These are fashionable Queen Costumes! I’m grateful that the designer’s collection is featured on movies like this! Kudos to W Magazine for including a section on their site called “Fashion on Film”!
Posted by: faschings kostüm | September 20, 2012 at 05:17 AM