Costumes, like mise-en-scene more generally, seem legible only when they're showy. Give the award to the period piece or the genre picture. Yawn.
I mention it for two reasons. One is how distracted I got by the discordant crispness of clothing worn by kids living in perfectly run-down RVs in a film I saw just last week. The second is this great piece on glam capers:
Good movie clothes speak movie language, not brand language. They’re like lines of dialogue written in folds and shadows; the way they move with, or against, an actor becomes part of the performance. A good glam caper needs great clothes, ensembles that inspire not “How much is it and where can I get it?” acquisitiveness but something deeper and less tangible, a kind of moody yearning. That’s a tall order for a bunch of cheetah spots. But it’s never too late to learn how to read their secret language.
If there is an academic writing as fluidly about fashion and fabric as Stephanie Zacharek does here (or Tom & Lorenzo and Abbey Bender do often and elsewhere), please tell me who and where to find them.
