Costume Design by:
- Travilla ( notable efforts: Adventures of Don Juan (1948), Don't Bother to Knock (1952), Gentlemen Prefer Blonds (1953), The Seven Year Itch (1955), and several more of Marilyn Monroe's films )
A sordid story of how showbiz grinds its stars into the dirt,
Valley of the Dolls is still renowned as a 'camp classic' even though I personally found it rather heavy in some ways! I can only be reminded of 1981's
Mommie Dearest, another film with a reputation of being campy nonsense despite being a pretty grim film under the Hollywood glamour. Perhaps it is the wonderfully glitzy costume design that is to thank for
Valley's reputation, as Hollywood costume designer Travilla was assigned to design the women's dresses, and given this is a film all about Hollywood, who better to design the fashions than a Hollywood costume designer?
The plot focuses on three unlucky (not that they know it at first...) girls who all get to taste fame, with most of the film's depressing events happening to the singer Neely O'Hara (Patty Duke), whose first dress upon reaching stardom is this golden mesh design.
Neely's next outfit is this sparkly white coat, worn with shiny stockings and boots as well.
Neely is next seen wearing another sparkly white dress made up of a diamond pattern material, though this one is obscured by the black furred coat she wears over it.
Neely seems to prefer wearing white, as the dress she wears when returning to Broadway is also white, this one being a fairly more simple design made of a ruffled material.
When about to be booted from Broadway yet again, Neely wears this rather more simple black and white top, the white section being a downward-pointing triangle - she also wears striped trousers and a polka-dot headscarf with it.
Neely's last dress bucks the trend of her wearing mostly white, as this is a very snazzy bottle-green striped top with a short brown vinyl skirt, though again mostly obscured thanks to being worn under a coat - you frankly see it better from it being held up on the wall!
It should also be worth noting the outfits of the dancers, one of whome has replaced Neely in her final Broadway appearance, these being dresses spoofing sailor uniforms, with shiny blue trim.
The second of the women to experience the evils of fame is Jennifer North (Sharon Tate, who also did some photoshoots wearing the film's costumes), who is first seen as a variety dancer, wearing a black leotard and wonderfully ornate headpiece with trailing blue feathers attached.
Jennifer then is seen wearing this chevron-patterned silvery dress, to the fateful musical performance where she meets her lover.
Jennifer is next seen wearing this lovely jacket, made of a shiny material and patterned in silver, copper and white in horizontal bands. This may be one of my personal favorites of Travilla's costume designs for the film.
Under the jacket, Jennifer wears a dress that is of the same material and pattern as the coat!
The luckiest of the three women (in comparison to the others, anyway) is Anne Welles (Barbara Parkins), a secretary who ends up in the showbiz world when she's made to star in adverts for a cosmetics company, and wears a good few lovely dresses in said adverts, none of which get much screentime sadly. The most notable of the dresses she wears as the 'Gillian Girl' is this beautiful sequined dress that feels like a precursor to Bob Mackie's flamboyant dress designs!
There are several other dresses worn in the 'Gillian Girl' adverts, all of them seen only far too briefly - one of them wasn't even seen in the adverts, instead being worn by an extra!
Another dress of Parkins', that is sadly barely seen on-screen, is this red and white design with a polka-dot patterned top segment and frilly-bottomed red skirt.
Acting as a sort of enemy towards Neely is Helen Lawson (Susan Hayward), a Broadway star and diva who gives O'Hara a good deal of grief at the film's start. Helen was originally meant to be played by Judy Garland, though she was fired after doing a few costume tests (
which have been uploaded on Youtube) - the first notable outfits she wears is seen during her musical performance, and is a sequined number with a silvery belt, collar and cuffs, with a silver star badge near the collar. The character is usually seen with these star badges possibly as a joke that she's obsessed with how she's, well, a star! It should be worth noting that after Hayward replaced Garland, some of the costumes were altered - notice how the collar is different between how it looks in the Garland costume test versus when Hayward wears it in the actual film.
The second of Helen's notable outfits is this green gown with golden lining that itself has beaded tassles along the edges. In the Judy Garland costume test video though, this gown is the same design but is orange instead of green?
Now, I saved the best for the last - yep, it's the iconic glittery sequined copper pantsuit, worn by Helen in a particularly embarrassing encounter with Neely, and my goodness doesn't this just define the word 'glitz' on its own?
Judy Garland was given the original pantsuit, which she then wore to one of her last New York concerts in 1967, and it still exists today thanks to Larry McQueen's Collection of Motion Picture Costume Design. To quote Larry McQueen about the redundancy of a star badge over such a shiny ensemble, 'You can never have too much bling!'.
