Oliver Messel (1904-1978) was Britain's leading theatre designer between the ‘30s and the ‘50s.
Acclaimed for his taste and mastery of period style, Messel created settings and costumes for ballet, drama, film, musical, opera and revue, but also worked in interior decoration and textile design.
Messel was famous for creating iconic pieces out of the most bizarre materials, but also for his knowledge of fabrics, cutting skills, sharp eye, research for period detail and flair for creative inventiveness.
In 1932 he designed the costumes for Max Reinhardt’s wordless medieval play The Miracle.
The first two images in this post show the costume for the gypsy character in The Miracle and, though the muted shades suggest fading and long use, you can still see some wonderful features such as the strips of fabric used to emphasise movement during dance, the ample sleeves and the sash of fabric cylinders on the chest.
The costume is currently exhibited in the V&A Theatre collections section. London’s Victoria & Albert Museum actually preserves around 10,000 items by Oliver Messel and the museum also held a major exhibition of his work in the early ‘80s.
The Miracle was very important since it brought Messel to the attention of film director and producer, Alexander Korda.
Messel first worked on the costumes for Korda's The Private Life of Don Juan, starring Douglas Fairbanks, followed by Harold Young's The Scarlet Pimpernel with Leslie Howard and Merle Oberon.
Among Messel’s best work there is Romeo and Juliet (1936), directed by George Cukor and starring Norma Shearer and Leslie Howard.
Messel was commissioned to design the film after Cukor saw his work for The Miracle in New York and the costumes for Merle Oberon in The Scarlet Pimpernel.
With a budget of $1,000,000 dollars, Romeo and Juliet was hailed at the time as the most expensive MGM production.
Messel was actually sent with a camera crew to Italy where, for three months (if only some films had such budgets and such level of research behind them…), he took images of buildings, squares and balconies, studying paintings, frescoes and drawings by Botticelli, Bellini, Carpaccio, Ghirlandaio, Piero della Francesca and Gozzoli.
"The Procession of the Magi" by Gozzoli was actually used as an inspiration for the costumes of the opening scene with the Prince of Verona and his followers, while Norma Shearer’s costumes were inspired by Fra Angelico’s painting "The Annunciation" and her ball gown was adapted from Michele da Verona’s "The Betrothal".
Gilbert Adrian in the end designed all the costumes, but Messel’s vision completed the film that included over 1,000 costumes and involved 500 people to make them.
Thousands of yards of fabric – from cotton to silk and satin with hand-broidered and beaded motifs – were employed for the costumes and one of Romeo (Leslie Howard)’s cloaks was actually made with yards of Mariano Fortuny cloth imported from Italy. Juliet’s skull cap also launched a trend and became a fashion hit when the film came out.
Messel designed nine films throughout his career, getting and Academy Award nomination for the set and costumes design of Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Suddenly, Last Summer.
In the mid-1960s, when his style became unfashionable, Messel abandoned theatre and moved to Barbados, launching a completely new career designing luxury homes in the Caribbean.
Some of the details Messel used in his costumes can definitely be reapplied in contemporary fashion designs: in fact don't you think that the cylindrical silver embellishments in David Koma’s dresses and skirts for Topshop call back to mind a bit the fabric cylinders in Messel's gypsy costume?
You decide, in the meantime, for further Messel inspirations check out in a library near you, the 1983 catalogue for the V&A Oliver Messel exhibition, edited by Roger Pinkham.
Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos
Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos
Comments