When Ruth E. Carter received her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame last month, she was the first costume designer to receive the award in more than 60 years. For anyone who’s spent the past year on their screen, it seemed like the time had come.
Not only because Ms. Carter became the first black costume designer to win an Oscar in 2019 when she took home the statuette for “Black Panther”. Or because she designed around 800 different looks for the sequel “Coming 2 America”, created a universe of exhilarating pan-border style, and used her platform not only to showcase her own designs, but also work by accident 30 other designers to improve on.
But because we’ve steamed indoors, consumed streaming services like water, and lived vicariously through storylines, the on-screen characters have become increasingly important. They have become companions, distraction, and entertainment.
And role models for what you wear.
As the normal clues for getting dressed have moved into the distance – street and office life; Peer groups and parties – what we saw on the screen has become empty.
“You can’t go to the store to go shopping,” said Salvador Pérez, president of the Costume Designers Guild and the man behind the dresses for “The Mindy Project” and “Never Have I Ever”. “So you shop on the screen.”
Why else were we so obsessed with the 1960s silhouettes of Beth Harmon in The Queen’s Gambit? The collars from the 1980s and Princess Diana’s power suits in “The Crown”? Nicole Kidman’s closet in “The Undoing”? The Ankara textiles and Puma dresses from “Coming 2 America”?
They became public talking points, just as street style and the red carpet once were. When we started to identify with the characters, their jobs and family situations, we wanted to dress like that too.
It makes sense. After all, clothing is simply the costume that we wear to play ourselves in everyday life.
And that meant that the costume designers behind them were suddenly being recognized as being as influential as … well, any influencer. Or fashion designer. This may be true to varying degrees in the past, but has rarely been so obvious.
“When everyone was stuck at home, they really noticed what was first on screen,” said Nancy Steiner, the costume designer behind Promising Young Woman, a sexual assault and revenge movie in which Carey Mulligan swings out of nowhere -faced young woman in pastel colors to fake drunken sirens in pinstripe suits and skin-tight clothes.
Ms. Steiner said she never got the attention she got this year in her 34-year career despite working on such popular films as “The Virgin Suicides” and “Lost in Translation”.
So the question is: when the pandemic ends and we step into the light, will costume designers finally get the respect they deserve? Not just as the creative minds behind the characters in our favorite films, but as triggers for so many of the trends that we actually wear?
The slow fade of the costume designer
The problem, said Arianne Phillips, the costume designer behind Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and thanks to her work with Madonna, a rare name known beyond the studio lot, is that costume designers rarely become brands. As a result, she said, “They have not been recognized for the impact they have had on culture.”
Once upon a time this was not the case. Once upon a time, in the late 1920s, Gilbert Adrian was considered a great American fashion designer who dressed Hollywood stars like Rita Hayworth both on and off screen.
Edith Head, costume designer for Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly and Barbara Stanwyck, later took on the role and toured the country with “Hollywood Fashion Shows”, wrote books (including “Dress for Success”) and even designed a teenage clothing line. She also guested on television and “gave dress advice to the eight million women who watched the House Party, Art Linkletter’s CBS afternoon show,” wrote Bronwyn Cosgrave in Made for Each Other, a book about fashion and the world Oscars.
So what happened
It started when Hubert de Givenchy usurped Ms. Head’s relationship with Audrey Hepburn and the official fashion world began to see opportunities in Hollywood. As the spotlight began to shift accordingly, Giorgio Armani set up his own outpost in Los Angeles, turning the red carpet into an extension of his runway, and from there things got even more branded. By the time Calvin Klein teamed up with Gwyneth Paltrow on “Great Expectations,” product placement deals and advertising for prominent “ambassadors” had pushed the costume designer, a freelance contract worker in the shadows of the studios, into the background.
There were exceptions, of course, often associated with period pieces, when the obvious artistry of clothing – which didn’t look like anything in the store – broke through. Names like Sandy Powell (“Shakespeare in Love”, “The Aviator”) and Janie Bryant (“Mad Men”) for example. And Mrs. Carter.
For the most part, however, the costume designer exists in the shadow of the cinema in which he works. And even as the worlds of fashion and film became more intertwined, and films were the raw material that inspired collection after collection, designers, for example, checked “Blade Runner 2049” as the muse and not Renée April, the costume designer who helped create the dystopian Fashion this publication. The public, in turn, was trained to overlook the person behind the clothes.
It got to the point that when a costume designer would occasionally work with a runway designer, as Paolo Nieddu did with Prada in “The United States vs. Billie Holiday,” Prada got the lion’s share of the attention, even though the fashion house only made nine of the many looks in the film, and each of these nine were actually selected and co-designed by Mr. Nieddu.
The Cerulean Blue monologue
It doesn’t help that the Oscars remain short-sighted in period mode. Even this year, almost none of the films that shaped the fashion talk (in the truest sense of the word) were nominated for best costume design. The five nominees instead included “Mulan” (in Imperial China), “Mank” (1930s and 40s) and “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” (1927). There’s no question that the clothes in these films were dazzling, but they didn’t change what the public wanted to wear to get the milk or wear on the weekend. (This has sparked renewed debate over whether a “contemporary” category should be created at the Oscars to rebalance.)
The studios themselves basking in the associated glow have little incentive to share the limelight. You own the work of the costume designer. Even when films are so influential that they spark retail collaboration (see Banana Republic’s Mad Men collection), studios often cut out the costume designer – even if the end result doesn’t work out too well.
“You want all the fame,” said Mrs. Carter.
And yet, at a time when appropriation itself is a hot topic, the appropriation of the work of costume designers is largely overlooked. (Where’s Diet Prada When You Need It?)
To that end, Mr. Pérez of the Costume Designers Guild has urged its members to talk about their work on social media, claim the recognition they deserve, and create a power base and profile that can go beyond their specific projects. He also has a marketing committee to help out.
“The public wants what we do,” said Mr Pérez, who recently donned an entire “fantasy prom” for “Never Have I Ever,” which he expects will spark new trends once we get out of isolation come out wanting to celebrate. “You just don’t quite know.”
It’s not that the costume design community wants to become fashion designers. (“Personally, I’m not interested in treading the fashion path,” said Ms. Carter, who tried her hand at working with fast fashion brands but found them limiting.) But they want to be fully recognized, what they are: taste makers.
This famous monologue from “The Devil Wears Prada” about how cerulean blue became a trend could easily have come straight from the mouth of a costume designer. You arguably have more power than any magazine editor now.
You are, after all, the creator of work that, as Ms. Carter said, “always filters down”.
