Clothes That Don't Make the Cut

I will preface this article by stating I am not a costume designer, or have ever worked in any costume or wardrobe duties as of now. I am also not a professional academic or journalist.

My information has been gathered from what costume designers, directors, etc have either told me personally or said in interviews. Some of it has been from poring over costume auction listings and collections.

What spurred me to write this? Well, partly for myself as a reminder of my own policies, partly for readers to understand why I've not covered a film/TV series on here or, if I have ignored a costume from a work I have covered on here anyway. If what you're looking for isn't on an article, this will tell you *why* I skipped it.

The costume is bought clothes.

Bought clothes are never included. This archive is about the art of costume design - clothes that were designed and constructed for a production. The clothes in Hackers, Miami Vice or Twin Peaks may have been great looks, but the fact they were bought means these works will not be covered.

In contemporary productions, it is the norm that uniforms of any sort - military, police, medical, food service - are bought clothes, kept in stock by the costume house that purchased them. Thus, they are never included.

Movies set in (as of the 2020s) fairly recent decades, like the 1970s or later, also typically will utilize bought clothes, albeit the clothes being bought from vintage clothing shops, thrift stores and flea markets. Ergo, these sort of productions also will not be covered.

This policy extends to bought clothes that were altered for a production; whether it was dyed a different colour, cut to be shorter, distressed to appear more ragged, had patches or studs sewn on, etc. Hence, films such as The Warriors, Mad Max 2 or The Lost Boys, despite their iconic looks, will not be covered.

And the policy also extends to costumes which consisted of bought clothes, minus a vest, helmet or mask made by the prop department; for example, Mark Hamill's pilot uniform in Star Wars.

The costume is wardrobe stock.

You can't go shopping for medieval, Georgian, Victorian, 1930s, etc fashion, and extras will NOT have costumes individually made custom-made for them, for the sake of budget - and the designer's sanity!

This is why all costume houses such as Western Costume Company, Angels Costumes or Costumi D'Arte, have racks of garments, some dating back decades that will have them used for extras and minor roles.

Some of these stock costumes are reuses from older production, some are pre-made stock garments made by the costume house. The bulk of 20th century clothing in costume houses will be vintage items.

This means that extras and bit-part roles in most historical productions are not covered, as they are always just wearing wardrobe stock, and did not have their costumes made to order by the designer.

Quite often, you can spot the same garments being reused in different productions - sometimes a main player's costume in one film will be reused in a brief scene, or an an extra, in another. The blog Recycled Movie Costumes is a wonderful resource in that regard.

Similarly, most period productions will just have their uniformed roles in costumes rented from wardrobe stock, not custom-made for the specific production.

(Note: Historical 'epics' such as Cleopatra, The Last Emperor, or Apocalypto, or futuristic/fantastical 'epics' like David Lynch's Dune or Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings, *did* have even the extra's costumes bespoke-made for the production. Such extravagant productions are the exception, not the rule.)

The costume is from a historical war film.

For historical war films such as Charge of the Light Brigade, Zulu, Patton or Saving Private Ryan, the historical uniforms will have to be made in bulk in a costume house.

Other historical productions, such as The Mission, The Last Emperor or Raiders of the Lost Ark, while not strictly war films, still required historical military uniforms to be made alongside the other cast members' costumes, often in the very same costume house as the other costumes.

Certain contemporary productions, like Firefox or Gorky Park, required cast members to wear Soviet uniforms, which were impossible to procure during the Cold War. Ergo, costume houses made the communist uniforms for these productions.

I generally do not cover 'uniform pictures' as the uniforms are the only costumes that were made for the production, and weren't 'designed' but copied from real designs; however, this policy slides for custom-made uniforms in productions with other costumes.

The costume is from a 2000s/2010s production.

A matter of taste by and large, the costumes in especially post-2010 productions tend to leave me cold, so don't hold as much interest for me to cover them.

More recent productions also tend to have their costumes covered in detail - often with very informative interviews with the costume designers - which means there is less of a need for me to cover them too.

I would perhaps suggest the Hollywood Movie Costumes & Props blog as a place to look if you're eager to look at the costumes of more recent productions!