hello my beautiful doves. welcome back! i
thought about doing a video talking about my favorite costume design movies for a while
now but i kind of put it off because i just was really afraid of not including something,
which sounds kind of weird so just like hear me out–there's so many movies out there and
honestly, i haven't seen that many movies. and i feel like if i did my top 10 costume
design movies or the top best costume design movies, and i didn't include one with actually
spectacular costume design, i would feel really bad about it later if i ever stumbled across that
movie in the future. and then you know flash back like raven baxter, but in the reverse situation
where it's just a flashback instead of a flash forward, where i'm like oh my god, i wish i could
redo that video again. i've just come to realize that it's kind of impossible for me to ever
watch every movie made and if i have that kind of mindset, i'm just never gonna end up making a
video like this. so yeah i'm over it, i'm over it. but i decided to be more specific because there's
just a lot of costume movies out there and i think i've talked about a lot of them already on this
channel, and so i wanted to do a video dedicated to 10 movies that i don't think get talked about
enough. so what do i consider underrated? honestly this is just my personal take on it like you
might think some of these movies are overrated or just "rated." i also haven't
watched too many foreign movies, which yes i'm trying to change that in the future,
so these movies are very like "hollywood" movies. "mirror, mirror" is a reinterpretation
of snow white and the seven dwarfs with lilly collins as snow and
julia roberts as the evil queen. armie hammer plays the prince unfortunately
and there's a few scenes that i wish i could scrub from my memory but it is what
it is. "put it down we're done playing or did you not learn enough from your spankings?"
in this version snow learns how to fight and is somehow able to beat the prince who's been
training since he was a child because #girlboss. the seven dwarfs are robbers by profession instead
of miners, there's a mysterious beast in the woods, there's some really cool cgi effects when
the queen goes to seek advice from her mirror, and honestly the humor is pretty hard to get
behind but i might have enjoyed it if i was a kid watching this. "prince alcott i have a proposition
for you. we're both single adults roughly the same age." "idontthinkwe'rereallythesame–" "i said
roughly." the costume designer eiko ishioka led the creation of around 400 costumes for this movie
and the altering of about 600 rental costumes as well. she sadly passed away from pancreatic cancer
before the movie ever hit the big screen but her beautiful work i think is admired and appreciated
by literally anyone who's ever seen this movie. the two best-dressed characters are of course
snow white and the queen. i think overall i prefer snow's wardrobe because the colors are more my
taste and i like the softness of the silhouettes, but i also think eiko did an amazing job costuming
the queen whose wardrobe makes her look super gaudy, sharp, and over the top. and the wedding
gown that julia roberts wears was so dramatic that it apparently weighed over 60 pounds and caused
her to pull a thigh muscle when she turned too quickly in it. i especially like how the queen
wears these bold and vibrant colors because i feel like it's such a cliche for
a fairy tale villain to be wearing a dark and dusty wardrobe. it just makes more
sense. like this is even one of those things that i couldn't really get behind with the disney
version, the 1937 version, because the queen's personality in basically all these snow white
incarnations is that she's very arrogant and she's extremely vain. like the entire reason why
she wants to kill snow white in the first place is because snow white is the fairest of them all.
"no, no, i know this in my heart. i think she's the most beautiful woman in the whole world."
"agree to disagree, let's leave it at that." my favorite costume in the movie is snow white's
swan dress. in this scene, all the party guests are expected to wear animal inspired gowns. the
dress has a victorian bustle-inspired shape for the skirt and wings that show snow's desire for
freedom from the evil clutches of her stepmother. in contrast the queen wears a bold
red peacock-inspired gown. snow represents the swan's elegance, while the queen
represents the peacock's power and arrogance. the premise of the 1956 musical comedy "high
society" is that socialite tracy lord played by grace kelly is about to get married second
time around to her new fiance george kitridge. her ex-husband ck dexter is still in love with
her and the tabloid journalist there to cover the wedding, mike connor, also gets thrown into
the mix, falling in love with tracy as well. it's based on a 1939 play called "the philadelphia
story," which was already adapted before in 1940 into a movie starring katherine hepburn, cary
grant, and james stewart. as far as a quick movie review, i believe valentina on letterboxed
says it best: "the philadelphia story is a 300 bottle of champagne whereas high society is a 25
bottle of merlot. while this one isn't as good, you can still enjoy that bottle." yeah so i
think across the board most people would agree that "high society" is a flimsier adaptation
than "the philadelphia story," but grace kelly looks fabulous, so the costume design
department at least hit it out of the park. the costume designer for this film was helen
rose and she actually designed grace kelly's real wedding ensembles for her actual wedding to
the crown prince of monaco. also fun fact the ring that grace kelly wears throughout the movie is her
actual engagement ring. i feel like, unlike the other movies on this list, the costumes in this
film don't really do anything to serve the plot, other than to make grace kelly look good. a lot
of old hollywood movies kind of only dress the main characters to look really nice and it's not
to cater to any kind of storyline. if anything i would say that her character wears chiffon fabrics
throughout the movie to evoke her etherealness, femininity, and honestly ditziness. a lot of
these dresses that she wears make her look like she's floating through the room. i also think
that tracy's outfits fall under grace's personal style in general in the same way that audrey
hepburn's outfits in a lot of her movies follow her personal style off-screen. and you know grace
kelly was beloved by the public. she was portrayed as being very high class and very elegant and
she married a frickin prince so that only added to the narrative. so all these positive attributes
that people associated with grace kelly definitely made her characters like tracy a lot more likable
as well. my favorite of tracy's looks is this white grecian gown, which she wears on top of an
equally stunning white halter bathing suit that has this little side slit detail. the whole look
is very sleek and dressing tracy as this greek goddess makes sense in the plot because everyone's
obsessed with her. "i'm a cold goddess." shout out to all the people who actually watched
this on disney channel when it aired. i didn't but kudos to you guys, you all lived in a time
when disney channel movies were actually good. so i watched "wish upon a star" recently
like i think if you follow me on letterboxd, i literally logged it in like a couple days ago.
well okay by the time this video is released, i would have logged it in quite some
time ago. i definitely do think that compared to the other movies on this list,
this one might feel a little bit underwhelming especially because you know compared to other 90s
movies of the timeline, "clueless," the wardrobe is just very simple. it's very paired down and
you might be wondering what's the big deal? the premise of the movie is basically a freaky friday.
it centers two sisters: alexia and haley wheaton. alexia is a senior in high school, haley i think
is a sophomore, alexia is the popular cool girl, and haley is the nerd social outcast. they are
completely different and do not get along at all, much their parents frustration. i also love the
parents in this movie by the way. they are just fantastic. then one night haley makes a wish that
she could be alexia and the next day they wake up in each other's bodies. it's exactly as cheesy and
heartwarming as you would expect for this kind of movie. no it is nowhere near as good as "freaky
friday." but it is very endearing, the pacing is really good, and i love the relationship between
the two sisters. so i decided to include "wish upon a star" on this list because even though the
costumes are not very glitzy or glamorous, i feel like one) it's actually a really good movie so i
wanted to talk about it and bring more attention to it, and two) i think it perfectly represents an
achievable mid-90s high schoolers wardrobe. alexia has a killer wardrobe that we get glimpses of
throughout the movie. alexia also regularly wears frosted lipstick, a very questionable but very
on-trend makeup style for the 90s. her parents are pretty rich, given the size of their house, so
that in theory obviously affords her nicer clothes than the average 90s high school student. "your
limit was 200." "oh i know, but what's an extra 100 over the course of a lifetime?" but none of it
is designer and all of the pieces are basic enough that you feel like a high schooler could wear this
exact outfit. i also like the costumes the side characters wear. they're all very age-appropriate
in my opinion and match the simplistic paired down look of the 90s, without letting go of the fun
colors and patterns that teenagers flock to. my favorite outfit in this movie is alexia's purple
mini skirt and white crop tank top. she wears it with a white backpack that is way too small to fit
any of her books and white heels. in my opinion it's a timeless youthful look and i could totally
see someone today wearing this exact same outfit. next on the list is the 1992 period drama called
"orlando" with costume design by sandy powell and diane van straalin. so the story of "orlando" is
loosely based on virginia woolf's novel "orlando: a biography." the titular character
orlando is based on vita sackville-west, another novelist and virginia's lover. the
movie first takes place in 1600 but jumps all across time which is what makes the costumes so
interesting. but yeah let's start in the 1600s. on her deathbed, queen elizabeth i grants the
nobleman orlando, played by tilda swinton, land, a castle, and a generous amount of money
on the condition that he never grows old. i don't know why, it's never really explained.
queen elizabeth is just very chaotic i guess. so the movie falls under magical realism because
orlando never ages and he literally lives for centuries. then one day in the 1700s he wakes up
as a woman. i don't want to spoil any more of the plot but it's definitely an interesting movie.
the concept is very quirky and it definitely sparks a lot of conversation and discourse about
gender identity and fluidity and time. not only do the costumes reflect the time changes throughout
the movie, because orlando wears trends that are popular throughout each decade or century, but
they also exemplify how gendered clothing has changed throughout time as well. in the beginning
of the film, the masc-presenting orlando wears yellow tights, a once masculine but now coded
feminine garment. later on, the femme-presenting orlando wears pants, a garment that was
considered masculine until the 20th century. the mets' costume exhibition last year: "about
time: fashion and duration" was actually inspired by one scene in this movie in particular. the
curator andrew bolton said, "there's a wonderful scene in which tilda swinton enters the maze
in an 18th century women's robe a la francaise, and as she runs through it, her clothes change
to mid-19th century dress and she re-emerges in 1850s england. that's where the original idea came
from. my favorite costume in the movie, because of my bias towards the 18th century, is the robe a
la francaise. the flower detailing is gorgeous and the shade of the icy blue looks particularly
good on tilda. i believe it's the first feminine garment that orlando wears after they wake up as a
woman and it's just so cool how the character kind of doesn't really question anything. they just put
on a gloriously hyperfeminine gown with all the structured undergarments underneath and they style
the hair in this towering poof–it's fantastic here we are, a movie that i think someone in
the comments is probably going to say is "not underrated," but i want to talk about it anyway,
so i'm going to talk about it. "the fifth element" is a sci-fi campy movie that's set in the 23rd
century. the main character is korben dallas, played by bruce willis. he is a former special
forces major and current taxi cab driver that gets pulled into a mission to stop the impending attack
against earth alongside leeloo, a humanoid, played by milla jovovich. the fashion designer jean-paul
gaultier designed all the costumes in this movie and they are completely out of this world. get it.
out of this world, because it's sci-fi in space. yeah okay. one of the most memorable costumes is
of course leeloo's bondage outfit that she wears when she breaks out of her tank. milla has
complained though that because of how skimpy the costume is, doing stunts in it was pretty
difficult. she said: "there was a lot of skin showing so i got pretty bruised up because i
couldn't wear pads and things that other people could wear." i love the costumes in this film
for how bright and of funky and fun they are. i feel like it's so easy or so tempting i should
say–it's never easy to costume design a movie–but i think it's so tempting to make the color scheme
for a lot of sci-fi apocalyptic movies dark and grim and have the characters appear as such,
but in my opinion adding color just makes the action so much more exciting. the air stewardess
uniforms are my favorite costumes in the whole movie actually. at some point in the movie korben
dallas gets on a flying hotel and you see all these beautiful women dressed in matching pillbox
hats two-piece suits consisting of a cut out top and a mini skirt and boots. the suits combine
the vintage styles of the 1960s with futuristic neoprene fabric and 23rd century normalized
sexuality. gaultier also blurred gendered clothing in the film which is something he also
did in his personal collections. take for instance the character ruby rod who is played by chris
tucker. ruby is a famous radio host who is always bragging about the women he sleeps with meanwhile
his costumes fully subvert gender expectations. something nice is that he's never ostracized
for being gender fluid and he's portrayed as being just as normal as the other characters.
his most memorable look to me is the cheetah print bodysuit with this super wide neckline.
in the 23rd century i highly doubt our views of gender are going to be the same as they are
now. breaking modern day present day conventions when you're doing a futuristic film... it's like
big brain. he's not a perfect character though. i read this article called "how do we interpret
the sexual politics of the fifth element in 2019" and the writer tristan young does criticize how
ruby's interaction with the air stewardesses is very predatory and "in doing so, the film
wrongly and perniciously tries to establish a correlation between non-traditional sexual
or gender orientations and sexual predation." okay so this is the oldest film on my list.
it's from 1933 so it's pretty freaking old. the movie was actually censored the first time
it was released as well so if you can, i would highly suggest seeking out the uncensored original
cut of the film. that original cut wasn't actually discovered till 2004 in a library of congress
fault but since then, it's been available. i don't know if it's widely available on the web but i do
know if there's any indie theaters in your area, if they've opened up and if they're showing it, i
would highly recommend taking advantage of that. the movie stars barbara stanwyck in the role of
lily powers. i love barbara stanwyck. she's one of my favorite actresses of all time. i also would
highly recommend watching "double indemnity" and my personal favorite of hers "the lady eve."
if barbara is not playing some conniving but sympathetic little minx then i don't want to see
it. so the story is her character lily lives a dreary working class life in pennsylvania but when
her father is killed in an accident, she and her friend chico decide to move to new york city. the
film follows her seducing more and more successful men to gain financial power. the messaging of the
film doesn't quite hold up today but you know, in the context of the 1930s, the only way that
women had social mobility was via exploiting men or using men, so with that in mind... it does make
sense. the costumes though are pretty fabulous. the 1930s is my favorite era of clothing and lily
is dressed to the nines from the very beginning. the costumes were created by ori kelly who
also did other movies like "some like it hot," "an american in paris," "casablanca," and "now
voyager." the costumes are in part why barbara decided to do "baby face" in the first place.
before "baby face," she was creating a reputation for herself playing these struggling working class
women roles. in her 1974 biography the writer ella smith said that barbara's fans disapproved of all
the "gingham and flannel roles" she was playing and wanted her to wear evening gowns. so in
an interview with the new york sun in 1933 barbara admitted that this was part
of the reason why she took the role. she said: "everyone else has glamour but me so i
played in baby face. anything for glamour." over the course of the movie, lily dresses more and
more extravagantly to mirror her social climbing. my favorite outfit of hers is this velvet
dress with the white lace details and matching gloves and headpiece. it's such an adorable
outfit, barbara looks like a doll, and i think this v-shape is overall very flattering
and adds another dimension to the dress. "troop beverly hills" is an 80s movie starring
shelley long with costume design by theodora van runkel. shelley long's character phyllis neffler
is one of the most fashionable woman characters in hollywood history. yes i said it. she was
elle woods before elle woods. "and then as he turned my chair around to face the mirror,
i saw it. he permed me!" [collective screaming] the premise of the movie is that phyllis is
undergoing a separation/divorce from her husband and she also signs up to be a wilderness girls
troop leader to bond more with their daughter. because they live in beverly hills, all the other
girls in their troop are rich kids who don't know how to do anything. "i may be a beginner at some
things but i've got a black belt in shopping." of course "troop beverly hills" has a lot of major
problems including cultural appropriation and red face, this uncomfortable portrayal of asians,
villainization of masculine/queer constructions of womanhood, and also the message that rich people
are nice to and shouldn't be bullied for being out of touch with commoner culture doesn't really hold
up as nicely in a pandemic world. so admittedly, i understand why a lot of people would not be
able to enjoy this movie. but if you do choose to watch this movie, i will say that shelley
long's acting is just so great. like she really makes the character phyllis neffler super
endearing and it's really hard not to root for her and to not enjoy her presence on screen.
"what is this reno? never go to reno girls. the california community property laws can't
be beat." she fully embodies the maximalist 80s high fashion standard complete with dramatic
shoulder pads and ruffles on ruffles. i'm honestly not a huge fan of 80s mainstream fashion. i don't
think i can ever really get behind the tutus over the leggings or those really poofy taffeta prom
dresses but with that said, i loved everything, or almost everything, that phyllis wore in this
movie. and i think like with fran fine, it's because her outfits have a lot of cohesion. it
doesn't matter how exaggerated or ridiculous the individual pieces are, if it matches then people
think you look put together period. my favorite of her outfits is probably this tweed jumpsuit.
it's definitely one of her simpler looks but it does have the classic 80s poofy sleeves, wide
belt, and hair bow. i'm also obsessed with all of her troop leader uniforms. when phyllis joins the
wilderness girls, she sends all of her uniforms to her tailor so that he can modify them to reflect
couture styles. v magazine actually reviewed this movie a few years ago and there's this one line
that i really loved, i'll read it to you all: "these exaggerated silhouettes at the moment–
cinched waists, pastel panniers, bustle trains–do much to convey her story (an out-of-touch melrose
marie antoinette with a heart and amex of gold)." the 1930s movie fashion was really like peak
hollywood glamour. we will maybe never get there ever again. i mean on the flip side we've traded
glamour for realism and for authentic stories, but on the other side, we've let go of glamour.
so "top hat" is very cheesy. if you're going to watch it, watch it for ginger rogers' dresses and
her and fred astaire's dancing. the movie follows ginger's character dale tremont who is a wealthy
model for a fictional clothing designer hence her beautiful wardrobe and she is on vacation in
europe. fred astaire plays jerry travers who dale falls in love with, but in a messy chaotic way,
mistakenly believes is her best friend's cheating husband. the film critic roger ebert calls the
plot in this movie "an idiot plot," as in the plot is only kept in motion because all the characters
are stupid. he still gave it four stars though. so the fun costuming fact about this movie is
that ginger rogers actually helped design her statement ostrich feather dress alongside the
costume designer bernard newman. the ostrich feathers alone cost $1500 at the time, which
is about $29,000 today. ginger rogers looks beautiful dancing in this dress though because
of the way that the feathers move with her. however another fun fact: fred astaire hated this
dress because the feathers would fly out from the dress and, i don't know, get all over his face
while he was dancing with ginger. and so the director mark sandrich actually tried to convince
ginger to substitute the dress with a different dress–another dress that she had already worn
in the movie "the gay divorcee." ginger was not having it though. she knew this dress was amazing
and so she threatened to walk out on the film if they didn't let her wear the dress in the movie.
so because she was a top biller, she did end up getting her way, but she did say that the rest
of the cast and crew treated her with a lot of attitude after the ordeal, which is stupid because
only fred is getting hit in the face with these feathers. like what is everyone else's stake in
this? it's misogyny. but a week after filming the scene and after he was done being a drama queen
(that rhymes), fred sent ginger a gift, which was this gold feather charm that could attach to
her charm bracelet. and he gave her a note as well with it and the note said: "dear feathers, i
love ya, fred." so that's the story of this dress. but if we're going to be fully honest, my
favorite dress in the movie is the sequin dress she wears for the final dance number. it
has this gorgeous peplum detail at the bodice, these designated panels that lengthen the dress,
the soft mermaid silhouette, it's magnifique. "barbarella" is a film that i hesitate to
call underrated but i decided to include this movie anyway because i think over the years,
"barbarella" has kind of fallen out of the costume conversation. and also, after doing some
research for this movie, i found out that there were actually a lot of myths surrounding the
costume design that i feel like it's my duty, my responsibility to debunk. "barbarella"
is a classic late 60s campy, very saucy space age movie starring jane fonda. it's based
on a french comic strip by jean-claude forest. the story is: the main character barbarella
is a government representative from earth and is commissioned by the president to stop
dr. durand durand, who has a weapon that could bring evil to the entire galaxy. admittedly, as a
movie, it's definitely a love or hate experience. the movie is over the top ridiculous and the plot
feels flimsy because it's so ridiculous. fair warning in case you want to watch this as your
next family movie: having sex is one of the common solutions to any problem posed in the film. "shall
i tell you what i would like?" "i think i know." the amazing costumes are designed by jacques
fonteray but a lot of people misattribute the costumes to designer paco rabanne who designed
only one dress in the whole movie. i feel really bad for fonteray because to this day, he
doesn't even get any credit for this movie. and he even tried really hard to stand out from
other designers of this time period. he even told women's wear daily in 1967 that his use of plastic
in this film was to create an armor and not to create plastic chainmail because "he didn't want
to do paco rabanne." and in 2007, he consulted lawyers to see if he could stop the media from
perpetuating these lies and erasing his legacy, but he didn't have enough money to cover the legal
costs moving forward. to add insult to injury in 2015, the paco rabanne official website posted
a photo of jane fonda wearing a fonteray design. just to be clear rabanne's contribution
to the movie was this lovely green dress. you can kind of tell that the green dress was made
by him if you're familiar with his work. he loved working with plastic and geometric shapes, and he
used a lot of bright fluorescent colors as well. in comparison, fonteray was heavily inspired
by the middle ages and the renaissance. that's why you can see that some of barbarella's and the
side characters' outfits have that robin hood ye olden day influence. the costumes in this movie
are so fantastic, match the movie's tone in their outrageousness, and i highly, highly recommend
watching it just for the clothes if you can't get into the plot. my favorite costume is
actually this body stocking that barbarella wears pretty early in the movie. i love the use of
plastic to create this kind of astro breast plate and stomach, as well as the plastic detail in the
shoes to give the medieval boot a futuristic look. last but not least, probably my favorite costume
movie on this list–no this list was not in order but i did want to save the best for last. it's
just my personal taste. i don't think the costume design in this movie exceeds objectively
any of the other movies i talked about, but i just really love the costumes in this movie
because it matches my taste okay. "what a way to go" is a black comedy. it's very silly, it's very
campy. the movie stars shirley maclaine in the role of louisa. she is a humble but incredibly
wealthy widow when we first meet her. she has a spectacular and terrible gift where every man
she marries becomes extremely successful but dies prematurely. the movie follows her recalling
to her psychiatrist a series of unfortunate marriages and ditzy husbands. the movie is very
satirical. it parodies different popular movie styles like the movie musical and the big budget
spectacle. also the punch line of the movie to make everything more unrealistic is that louisa
doesn't want any money at all. she actually tries to donate all of her money to the irs. "well
i've just been reading these business reports." "are you faced with ruin? :D" "i am three times
as rich as i was the day we got married!" "oh no!" the beautiful costumes were created by none
other than edith head. edith's budget for this movie exceeded $500 000 and harry winston provided
about$ 3.5 million in jewels. just for reference, $500,000 in 1964 is roughly $4.3 million today.
she created more than 72 costumes for shirley and the hair stylist sydney guilaroff created
matching wigs for each look. moss maybry did the rest of the cast costumes because edith said she
was too busy dressing shirley. louise's costumes in this movie other than being fun and campy to
match the fun and campy vibe of the movie also reflect where she is in life and which husband
she's married to. louisa's first marriage is to a working class man and before he strikes rich,
she wears gingham and plaid. when she marries an artist, she wears abstract colorful dresses and
when she marries a narcissistic actor named pinky, she wears this cotton candy pink fur coat
over a strapless floor-length pink gown with matching pink opera gloves and even a pink
beehive wig, which is one of my favorite looks in the whole movie. it kind of goes to show how
much of herself she puts into her marriages and if we want to take a darker reading, how her
lack of self-identity puts her at risk for never truly finding happiness. my other favorite
costume in this movie is the black bathing suit. i have never seen anything like it since but i
would buy a recreation in a heartbeat. the top of the bikini specifically with the straps wrapping
around the neck like a collar... it's to die for. thank you all for joining me today, let me
know in the comments if you've seen any of these movies that i listed, what you think about
them, or if there's any movie you want me to check out because it has great costumes. as i said
again, i haven't watched every movie so i didn't purposely try to exclude a movie. i probably
just didn't remember it or i haven't watched it. and these are also not like the top 10 most
underrated "best" costume movies either, these are just 10 movies that i really wanted to
talk about that i really liked the costumes of. so thank you all again for listening and i'll see
you all next time. have a lovely rest of your day! bye!
