Wednesday, 29 March 2023

Valley of the Dolls (1967)

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!'.

Sunday, 5 February 2023

Solarbabies (1986)

Costume Design by Bob Ringwood

While heavily inspired by Mad Max, Bob Ringwood's costumes for Solarbabies were of a more futuristic flair. The titular 'Solarbabies' sports team of the title wear a set of futuristic padded sports armor covered in blue, red and pink spraypaint in different patterns.
Their enemies the Scorpions wear more intimidating, gunmetal-coloured armor with masked helmets.
The Mad Max influence is seen clearly with the denizens of Tyretown, clad in the usual tattered leathers. Tyretown's guards are interesting in that they feel like a precedent for Ringwood's cut-up tire armor designs for Demolition Man a few years later, as they sport armor that is similarly made up of torn up rubber tyres!
One aspect that aged badly is the Native American tribe all played by white actors. The tribe's outfits seem to be made up of cut-up patterned fabrics arranged into either very revealing tops, such as the fit sported by Ivor (Terence Mann), or cloaks.
By contrast the 'Eco Warriors', another group of wasteland nomads, wear costumes inspired by Bedouin garb, though with baggy sleeves, deep collars and patterned lining and large panels over the waist.

The Eco Warrior costumes feel a bit similar in design to the Fremen outfits Ringwood had designed for David Lynch's Dune a few years earlier

More outfight 'futuristic' are the uniforms worn by the prison orphanage's staff, such as a briefly seen teacher wearing a prim beige dress. The orphanage's guards wear odd looking jumpsuits with lighter yellow mesh patches, worn with caps.
A futuristic suit was made for Sarah Douglas as the scientist Shandray. This also feels similar to one of Ringwood's Dune designs, namely the dress made for Lady Jessica.
The uniforms of the 'E-Police' wear predominatly blue leather, with the commander Grock (Richard Jordan) wearing a blue leather uniform with ribbed panelling over the shoulders and cuffs.

The soldiers under him wear motorcycle outfits that have been altered with extra panelling, though I don't know if the leather pants and jackets were off the rack or custom-made. You can see the greeblies stuck on what are obviously bought motorbike helmets!

Max Headroom (1987)

Costume Design by Jean-Pierre Dorléac

Note: Dorleac was only costume designer on the pilot episode 'Blipverts', and I have neglected to include the other episodes costume designers as I'm sure all of it was just rented or bought.

The American TV series followed the plainclothes costume sense established by the original British pilot movie, but there was some slightly futuristic designs to be seen in the pilot episode, the first being the snazzy jacket worn by Edison Carter (Matt Frewer) made up of black leather with fabric panels over it - the jacket bears a slight similarity to the one Dorleac designed for Dean Stockwell in the Quantum Leap episode 'Killing Time', which natch, was also set in a neon-drenched near-future...
Another slightly futuristic outfit is this rather prim looking suit worn by Carter's partner in (reporting) crime Theora (Amanda Pays), who sports a grey jacket with angular cuts around the bottom, and worn over a white shirt with a pointed asymmetrical collar. Out of all the outfits that Amanda Pays wears in this episode, I suspect this was the only one that was actually made to order for the episode, as the others look fairly contemporary.
There are also the futuristic uniforms worn by the various security guards in the pilot episode as well as the episode 'Security Systems', which have an angular grey panel with triangular buttons, and bear a slight similarity to the suits Dorleac designed for the Battlestar Galactica episode 'Experiment in Terra'.