The article was published on November 3, 2011 and today, Chris Laverty published a post about Bonnie and Clyde's Costume Designer's passing (on November 4, 2011): "Costume Designer Theadora Van Runkle Dies Aged 83".
This one is dedicated to all the horror film lovers and Halloween enthusiasts.
Here are some classic horror film stills and wicked-witch-worthy runway looks for your enjoyment!
Nosferatu (1922)
White Zombie (1932)
Nightmare Castle (1965)
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Looks from Fall/Winter 2011 Collections [taken from Style.com].
Hope you all had a great Halloween Weekend filled with horror movie marathons. Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980) and Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) are my go-to for this occasion. What about you? What films did you guys watch this weekend?
The musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), directed by Jacques Demy, is no doubt a critically acclaimed French film. The third feature selection of Vanity Fair’s Fashion in Film Festival in partnership with MAD (Museum of Modern Art in New York City), co-curated by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and Simon Doonan stars Catherine Deneuve (as Geneviève Emery), Anne Vernon (as Madame Emery), Nino Castelvuovo (as Guy Foucher) and Marc Michel (as Roland Cassard). It was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 1965 and four more times in 1966 for Best Original Song (“I will wait for you”, music by Michel Legrand and lyrics by Jacques Demy), Best Score (Michel Legrand and Jacques Demy), Best Music and Scoring of Music, Adaptation or Treatment (Michel Legrand), and finally for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay – Written directly for the Screen (Jacques Demy).
A.O. Scott of the New York Times looks back at this musical masterpiece in the following video, but please take caution, because it does pretty much tell the whole story in 3 minutes.
I won’t go into details about the film or the story, since it’s summed up pretty well there and you should just try seeing it for yourself, but as it was the Film Festival's goal to show how a film serves as a filter through which many designers draw inspiration for their creations, I will simply post screencaps from the film and hope that you can imagine how inspirational this film can be. The palette is beautiful and the cinematography, the production design, and all of the mise-en-scène is worthy of praise.
Enjoy and pay close attention to the synergy between the Costume Design (Jacqueline Moreau), the Production Design (Bernard Evein) and the Cinematography (Jean Rabier)!
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg was another great choice for these carefully chosen films featured at Vanity Fair’s Fashion in Film Festival. What a treat to have been a part of it. There are still three more films to come, so keep an eye out for them.
Beijos,
Lô
Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (1964): Parc Film, Madeleine Films, and Beta Film. Directed and written by Jacques Demy, Costume Designs by Jacqueline Moreau, Production Design by Bernard Evein, Cinematography by Jean Rabier, Original Music by Michel Legrand.
The second screening of Vanity Fair’s Fashion in Film Festival 2011 (with The Film Society of Lincoln Center and The Museum of Arts and Design), was X, Y, & Zee (also known as XY & Zee, and Zee & Co.). It was directed by Brian G. Hutton and was based on the novel Zee & Co. by Edna O’Brien. This 1972 British film stars Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Caine and Susannah York. It’s set in the post-1960s London social scene.
Elizabeth Taylor plays Zee Blakeley, the loud, vulgar, and shrewish wife of architect and philandering husband Robert Blakeley (Michael Caine) with whom she has a love/hate volcanic sort of marriage. As the title suggests, the film is a story of a love triangle. Robert meets the beautiful and sensitive Stella (Susannah York) at a party thrown by one of their socialite friend, Gladys (Margaret Leighton). At first, it seems Stella, (the polar opposite of Zee), is just a way for Robert to take a breather from the tumultuous relationship with his trainwreck of a wife, and he has no intention to hide this from both of them. But when this fling turns into a relationship that begins to threaten her marriage, Zee goes on a jealous rampage and scheming adventures to break Robert and Stella up. Taylor’s hot-tempered performance steals every scene, and her drunken rages, her delight in aggravating her husband, and her hilarious tantrums are a thrill to watch.
Liz Taylor’s wild performance parallels the outrageous costumes and excessive jewelry of the film. Costume designer, Beatrice Dawson, did an excellent job at using Taylor’s costumes as an extension of her character, a “voluptuous vulgarian with a huge appetite for everything”.*
Here is a composite of my favorite scenes, I just love Elizabeth Taylor as Zee, and you can see how her clothes help her thrive as her character.
As Roger Ebert said, “the movie is no masterpiece”.** The film doesn’t make any grand statements and doesn’t achieve all that much in the end, but the actors’ performances in this romantic triangle makes up for what is missing in the plot. The incredible early-70s settings and costumes are a treat to watch.
Visually and emotionally X, Y & Zee is a great source of inspiration for designers today. I noticed lots of Beatrice Dawson's looks that are still relevant today. This 1972 filmcertainly serves as a reminder of how much fashion is recyclable and how tough it is for designers to be inventive season after season.
Beatrice Dawson certainly went to town with Zee's character, exaggerated jewelry, kaftans, ponchos, fringe and tassels, fur, suede, silk, you name it, and it's still relevant, everything comes back.
Tassels were frowned upon in the fashion world not very long ago, they were seen as tacky and as something that should only be used in furniture. Style.com's Nicole Phelps made mention of this in her reviews for Behnaz Sarafpour's Fall 2005 RTW Collection and Gianfranco Ferré's Spring 2007 RTW Collection. But since Spring 2010, it's been seen time and time again everywhere from shoes, earrings, handbags, belts and even on the clothes themselves. And the same goes for fringe, something else we see Zee wear a lot in this film. Here are a few examples.
This Fall, fur is certainly one of the standout trends, with a psychedelic twist. Zee wears a beautiful blue fur coat in one of my favorite scenes. Here are a few from this Fall 2011 Season. I can totally see Zee wearing all of these coats.
The bow silk blouse Zee wears in the film as well as fringed ponchos is also a trend this fall, you can find some cute looks in these three links from Shopbop and Fabsugar:
X, Y, & Zee was a perfect addition to the 2011 Vanity Fair's Fashion in Film Festival. I hope you've enjoyed looking at the clip and the looks I've put together here. All you have to do now is go watch this Elizabeth Taylor gem!
Beijos,
Lô
X, Y, and Zee (1972) Columbia Pictures Corporation. Directed by Brian G. Hutton. Costumes by Beatrice Dawson. Starring Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Caine and Susannah York.
Vanity Fair and the Museum of Art and Design’s Fashion in Film Festival could not have been titled as such without the long-lost treasure that is Qui Êtes-Vous, Polly Maggoo? (1966). This gem emerged from obscurity after the Criterion Collection set out to release a selection of “lost, forgotten or overshadowed classics” in the series entitled Eclipse. Eclipse 9: The Delirious Fictions of William Klein is a 3-disc DVD box set, released in 2008, which includes Klein’s only three fiction features – Who are you, Polly Maggoo? (1966), Mr. Freedom (1969), and The Model Couple (1977). His first feature film (and the first of the Fashion in Film Festival) is charming, hilarious, quirky, eccentric, clever and visually brilliant.
I must say that for most of the films featured at the festival, I felt like the directors and screenwriters were on an LSD trip when creating these films, and this was no exception. I’m surprised that the curators of the event (The Film Society of Lincoln Center and Simon Doonan) chose a film that is a satire of the French mid-1960’s fashion world as the opening act, in which Klein unapologetically skewers the fashion industry. But they would have been crazy not to, it certainly shows their sense of humor.
Qui Êtes-Vous, Polly Maggoo? was written and directed by William Klein, an expat American in Paris and former fashion photographer for Vogue during the Diana Vreeland era. His explosive New York street photography made him one of the most heralded artists of the sixties. He was ranked 25th on UK’s Professional Photographer’s “100 Most Influential Photographers of all time”: “The anarchic rebel of fashion, reportage and film making. His wide-angle ‘in your face approach’ lives on, as does his attitude.”*
He’s one of about 300 photographers of the 20th century’s most famous international photographers to be part of the photographic collection of the Museum Ludwig, Cologne. In the book, Photography of the 20th Century – Museum Ludwig Cologne (2001) Marianne Bieger-Thielemann describes him as someone who has “created an uncompromising rejection of the then prevailing rules of photography.” In 1954, Alexander Liberman, then art director of Vogue hired him, launching his career as a fashion photographer, “a journey marked by his ambivalent and ironic approach to the world of fashion.” Klein did not want to continue with mundane fashion poses, but wanted to take, in his own words “at last real pictures, eliminating taboos and clichés.”**
The move into the cinema world was a natural progression in his artistic endeavors. He only made three fiction features. His debut, Qui Êtes-Vous, Polly Maggoo?, in which he was clearly influenced by the French Nouvelle Vague and Buñualian surreal imagery, has all of the subversive and anarchic elements of his photographic aesthetic which jumps out at you in every single frame. Every shot is meticulously arranged and the result is true gold, or should I say, black and white treasure, an accomplishment not only of Klein himself, but also of the genius work of costume designer Janine Klein, cinematographer Jean Boffety, art director (sets) Bernard Evein, and still photographer Patrick Aubrée. Hair and wigs were done by Carita, and I could not find who did the make-up. All of their work combined is what gave this film its visual black and white brilliance.
Now for the plot, there really isn’t one. The film has a premise, however, in which Polly Maggoo (real-life model Dorothy MacGowan), a Brooklyn-born supermodel in Paris, becomes the subject of a TV documentary “Qui Etes-Vous”. We see her interviewed by Jean-Jacques Georges (Phillip Noiret), and we see TV journalist Gregoire Pecque (Jean Rochefort) follow her, interview her, and become fascinated by her, while TV show producer (René Clermont) just wants to unmask the pretty face as just a banal superficial creature. There’s also a sequence shot where fans so allured by Polly Maggoo’s beauty that they follow her on the streets of Paris asking her to marry her, giving us a peak into Klein’s critique of the savage nature of our cultural obsession with beauty and desire. Then there’s the bizarre subplot of the Prince Charming’s (Sami Frey) obsession to make her his Princess, and even the powerful magazine editor Miss Maxwell (Grayson Hall) who is portrayed as a know-nothing character with too much power, clearly based on Klein’s former boss Diana Vreeland, editor of Vogue. Like I said, LSD, but it’s so odd and humorous that it’s well worth the trip.
After the absurd runway show of the models wearing aluminum sheets as clothes (which were designed for the film by Bernard and François Baschet and Xavier de la Salle) and Miss Maxwell (Grayson Hall) proclaims it "magnifique", the mania begins, with allured fans proposing to her on Parisian streets:
With her new acclaimed success, Polly Maggoo becomes the subject of the TV documentary, Qui Êtes-Vous? She's first photographed inside the apartment, and is interviewed by both Grégoire Pecque (Jean Rochefort) and Jean-Jacques Georges (Philippe Noiret). Notice the wonderful use of the B&W in all of the mise-en-scène here.
As the TV crew makes decisions about how the documentary should go, they discuss how they should edit what they have filmed so far, and we see some of the images they will use for the documentary, while we listen to their bashing and scathing commentary of the the fashion industry. Notice costume designer Janine Klein use of B&W in their clothes.
After the producer of the TV documentary (René Clermont) tells Grégoire that he wants him to find out whether there's anything underneath Polly's pretty face, we see him interview her in her apartment and even give her a psychoanalytical test, full of hilarious dialogue exchange between the two.
These next two strips are gorgeous examples of the B&W use of the sets, costumes, make-up and hair.
There are 3 cameos of real-life photographers throughout the film. Here is Jeanloup Sieff photographing the editorial entitled "Is Paris Dead?"
Another cameo, this time a photo-shoot with Louis Faurer.
And last, but certainly not least, for the photographers' cameos, is a photo-shoot by one of my favorite photographers of all time, Richard Avedon.
Here's a few stills of Grayson Hall playing Miss Maxwell. Klein's hilarious and blasphemous parody of Vogue's editor in chief Diana Vreeland were one of my favorite scenes.
Cinematography by Jean Boffety and Guiliouet Lefrançois, Drawings and Special Effects by Klein Folon and D.S.A. Laboratories, Editing by Anne-Marie Cotret, Jacqueline Simoni, and Annie-France Lebrun.
The ending credits is worth a look as well. Music by Michel Legrand and art by Topor.
Qui Êtes-Vous, Polly Maggoo? is a must see for anyone interested in fashion, film, photography and French cinema. The sets and costumes and the black and white camerawork are all so stylish. This film amounts to satire, glamorous fashion, an audacious attack on media, a fractured fairy tale, and a critique of cultural image making all in one, full of hilarious dialogue, crazy subplots and brilliant black and white aesthetic and pure photographic genius. It's no surprise that designers continue to be inspired by this film. What a great choice for the opening selection of the Fashion in Film Festival!
Beijos,
Lô
Qui Êtes-Vous, Polly Maggoo? (1966) Delpire, Paris. Written and directed by William Klein, Costume Design by Janine Klein. *professionalphotographer.co.uk Retrieved on September 24, 2011. **Taschen GmbH (2001), 20th Century Photography Museum Ludwig Cologne p348.
