There is a renewed interest in the work of Orry-Kelly, the Academy Award-winning costume designer who created dresses and gowns for many famous celebrities including Marilyn Monroe. His memoir Women I've Undressed was recently published, an exhibition - "Orry-Kelly: Dressing Hollywood" - is currently on at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, while Gillian Armstrong shot a fascinating documentary about him, "Women He's Undressed".
Before rediscovering him, though, a great idea would be to re-watch some the films in which his work appeared. The list is long and includes a bit of everything from romances to dramas, though an interesting way to learn more about a costume designer is maybe starting from films that are not terribly well known.
A good example is the horror story (well, today it's also a Monday and the first day of the week is usually a bit of "a horror story" for many of us...) Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933).
Based on an unpublished short story entitled "The Wax Works" by Charles Spencer Belden and directed by Michael Curtiz, this American Pre-Code mystery-horror film revolves around Ivan Igor (Lionel Atwill), a sculptor who operates a wax museum in 1921 London. Igor seems to be particularly fond of some of the statues in his museum, the three ones representing Joan of Arc, Voltaire and Marie Antoinette.
After a fire started by his business partner destroys the place, Igor manages to re-open a new museum in New York City several years later. Yet his new gallery of wax figures hides a horrid mystery behind its doors, something that young reporter Florence Dempsey (Glenda Farrell), on the verge of being fired for not bringing in any worthwhile news, eventually discovers while investigating the suicide of model Joan Gale (Monica Bannister).
Florence and her roommate Charlotte Duncan (Fay Wray) are dressed in the film in very sensible costumes: 1930s dresses and skirt suits quite often matched with long and wide coats prevail and the two friends always wear quite elegant cloche hats.
Even on screen you can see that fabrics must have been of great quality: Orry-Kelly had a passion for the finest fabrics around and you can detect it from the way the clothes move or stand on the main actresses' bodies.
Dynamism prevails in Florence's wardrobe since she's a young reporter ready to jump at the prospect of a good news story, while the more romantic Charlotte seems to be into zigzags and romantic motifs as well. At the very end of the film Florence, who has finally got her scoop, is clad in a striking dress with a very architectural motif around the elbow area, matched with a leopard coat and scarf.
The costumes in this film suffer from one main point: the movie was shot in two-color Technicolor, a process that combined red and green dyes to create a colour image with a reduced spectrum. As a consequence, the main shade that emerges from the film is a flesh and corpse-like colour (referenced in Ivan Igor's explanation of his interest shifting from stone to wax, a material that could help him reproducing "the warmth, flesh, and blood of life far more better...than in cold stone").
Even the city seems to be drenched in this colour, as if it breathes the horrors boiling inside Igor Ivan's laboratory, a metallic structure located underground, in the bowel of a rather bland museum, where Ivan keeps a pit of flesh-coloured boiling wax.
Fashion-wise the flesh coloured tones of the film definitely detract from the costumes, yet they remain intriguingly elegant and, hopefully, one day some publisher will come up with a special book featuring cutting patterns for some of the best costumes by Orry-Kelly. After all, there is nothing like a cleverly cut garment (like the ones Florence wears in The Mystery of the Wax Museum) to make you feel elegant, at ease and ready to take up the challenges life throws at you.
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