Can a costume designer truly make a difference and improve a film? Absolutely yes. And if you want the proof, go back in time to the '40s when they were shooting "Laura", a film taken from Vera Caspary's eponymous novel.
Shooting started in April 1944 with Rouben Mamoulian directing it, Otto Preminger as producer and René Hubert as costume designer.
Things didn't go as planned, though, as the performances were appalling and the costumes that didn't go well with the rhythm and themes of the story. Everything was scrapped and the project was restarted with Otto Preminger as director and a new costume designer, Bonnie Cashin.
In the film, that could be considered as a portrait of obsession studied from a psychological point of view, Detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) tries to discover who killed a beautiful, charming young woman – Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney), a successful advertising agency executive. The body of a woman with her face destroyed by bullet shoots was indeed discovered in her flat and everybody assumed it was Laura's.
McPherson investigates her friends, among them resentful columnist and journalist Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb), a character based on New Yorker journalist and theatre critic Alexander Woollcott, who was fascinated like Waldo by murders; bland, annoying and perennially skint fiancé and kept man Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price); Laura's wealthy aunt Ann Treadwell (Judith Anderson), a rather flamboyant character (as shown by her cool black '40s attire matched with a printed skirt casually tied at her waist in a sarong style - View this photo) in love with Shelby; and loyal housekeeper, Bessie Clary (Dorothy Adams).
As the plot develops, we get different perceptions about Laura: her mentor, protector and would-be lover Waldo tells us she was a young and naive girl when he met her for the first time, but, thanks to him, she became a successful sophisticated woman.
McPherson never met Laura, but he starts dreaming about her when he sees a portrait in her flat and starts idolising her. The mosaic-like plot allows to put together another representation of Laura: she is an innocent and talented working woman who seems to have the wrong friends.
Her success and generosity mean she often becomes a target of male desire, but the men in her life seem to be jealous about her and, while they do not admit it, they constantly try to stifle Laura's independence and tend to turn her into an object.
Laura is for example Waldo's "walking stick", while Shelby, who starts working at Laura's marketing agency thanks to her, seems to fantasise about her as a wife rather than as his colleague or even as his boss.
Laura blossoms and changes under our eyes through her wardrobe and from femme fatale she escapes the manipulations of the men who try to objectify her via her clothes.
As the mosaic-like narration proceeds, we discover more about Laura through several flashbacks and points of views, but also through the designs she wears.
Cashin injected a sense of modernity in the film, avoiding over-dressing and choosing pieces ideal for a modern and entrepreneurial woman.
When we first meet laura she is trying to get an endorsement for a pen advert from Waldo: she is young and wearing a coordinated functional and casual ensemble with a matching hat. Rather than a personal style at this stage Laura has determination and stubborness.
As she becomes more successful she also turns into a sophisticated lady with the help of Waldo as a stylist, so that we see her in an ample floral evening gown, an elegant black evening dress and a Grecian goddess evening dress in pure white that seduces Shelby.
There are also several separates such as a graphic kimono jacket donned with a pair of trousers, a stripy top with a peplum and fluid and sensual dresses like the one with a drawstring top that Laura wears for her homecoming party that ends up with her arrest at the police station where she accessorises the design with a minimalist scarf.
Rather than opting for rigid jackets in a striclty '40s style, Cashin preferred these styles for Laura to symbolise the fact that she is a kind and gentle soul.
Twice we see Laura wearing Cashin's iconic floppy soft-brimmed rain hats and it is right when Laura appears in front of the detective who thinks she is dead in her cloche-like hat and white raincoat that Laura finally reveals herself for who she truly is.
Laura is not the sophisticated femme fatale in the painting McPherson has been dreaming of, but a modern woman, free, professional and independent, a woman who has authority over her life and who is desired by jealous and protective men who want to rob her of her personality.
Interestingly enough, the separates and the raincoat matched with a floppy hat, symbols of a wardrobe for a fictitious free and independent woman, turned a few years later into Cashin's trademark pieces, proving that the designer was already working on creating a timeless wardrobe for a modern woman in the mid-'40s.
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