When you watch a movie, you’re watching something put together by thousands of people and while a lot of the art of the film gets discussed — writing, acting, directing, cinematography, product placement – makeup and costume design get overlooked.
Both here and at the Oscars, amiright costume designers.
But costume design is shorthand for how you should feel about people — a picture’s worth a thousand words, and sometimes those words are crisp suits in the back of a Humvee full of soldiers or jacket pulled over a hoodie.
One of the more important parts of costume design is color. It’s used in nature, viral marketing, supermarkets to trick your brain into feeling things, and costume designers use it to define who a character is, both by themselves and in relation to others. Spider-Man, for example, is a creepy character with weird eyes and a bug’s theme, but because he has the classic hero’s blue and red, we don’t think of him as a villain — unlike Lizard, Joker, and Green Goblin, who are all purple-greeners, i.e., villains.
That’s the second superhero example because it’s most prominent in the costumes of superheroes since they’re allowed to be so gaudy, bold, and ostentatious, but the language of costume design is there even when the person isn’t wearing spandex or ab-filling armor.
Julia Roberts’ transformation in Pretty Woman is written on her wardrobe more than anywhere else, rising from shitty jeans to clothes you’d see people wear immediately before French revolutionaries kill them. You can see Betty Draper’s dress signifying she’s a model who’s gone out of style. Doc Brown’s introductory shot telegraphs his insanity better even than casting Christopher Lloyd did.
