Are Period Drama Costumes Historically Accurate? Costume Review, Pt 1

what is today I'm going to do what I'm doing best which is judging other people's work more precisely what is this what is this more precisely I'm going to great movie costumes on a scale one to ten and I'm going to tell you why I think some of them are bad or why I think some of them are good or why I like some of them I'm going to be judging them on historical accuracy so I'm not going to be writing like the overall design and the idea like no I'm fated for that will you stop do I have to do this again the first one is imma do it's pretty popular it's a 1990s costume like period drama film about Walter like as you could probably guess and I think it's the costumes are trying to be a bit edgy and stuff but they lacked a circle like face almost all of the actresses the next dress I'm wearing like horrible horrible white wigs it was a thing but they will do it better and like if you look at the paintings from the era you can never see like the edge of the wig on the forehead whereas like in this film it's pretty much normal and they all kind of look like they're really cheap I know if it was not about women in this case so I kind of understand why did it didn't really focus on that or anything but some of the costumes are really really bad which is kind of surprising because it's already like mid 1980s and there have been several productions like 18th century based that had way better costuming when it comes to proper undergarments and stuff that i'm gonna talk about later so it's kind of surprising that they didn't even try like if you look at the extras the costumes look really really cheap you can say you can tell they're walk you know what's the problem guys like i haven't been using English for at least like two weeks or three three weeks and the only time I day to use English must should make a previous video and now my tongue is just kind of wet so I'm working on that but like I clearly need to make videos more often because otherwise my tongue is just gonna go like okay back down I'm on some of the fabrics are like really really bad if you look at the dress that the girl is wearing here it kind of looks like curtains and I know some of 18th century fàbregas did look like curtains but they had very specific type of pattern that you can kind of hell did not look like that also like what the hell is this lady wearing okay have a look at the hot she's wearing it just looks so weird oh it's way too big like if it's supposed to be 70 seventies it's way too big if it's supposed to be 1780s then why are all the other people wearing stuff that's 70 70s and I think what make me really like pissed off when I watched a film was this scene here when Mozart's lover she kind of undresses herself and we see this beautiful corset that's actually like quite a thoroughly accurate except it's late 19th century plus it has tops which was something that wasn't in fashion until like 1950 so I was watching and asking like sure sure I think that kind of shows why everything else is not working because the undergarments are already wrong when it comes to hair I kind of understood that was the idea I'm Walter and sporting this kind of 1980s rock hairdo that was popular at the time and I kind of get the idea like it was kind of a rock star of the era but when it comes to clothes they just looked cheap and sometimes he can tell a guy was making it pure drama because sometimes are just like sure I mean 18th century like frailes lace is right pastels and you can kind of my neighbor is doing her carpet right now and it can kind of tell if I didn't put that much thought into it because they were like yeah let's go back let's go wild this obviously that's not the case for every film because like I'm gonna talk about Barra Linden later which is like a masterpiece when it comes to costuming and that was also made by a guy but I feel like sometimes when the guys are not really that focused it doesn't really work out this gun is awful like this ml outfit is just really bad what I don't like about films like that is that they kind of bring force that diario type of a like 18th century being like that Kitsch powdery kind of century with like huge white wigs which is not always true the first half of 18th century for example was like an era of women wearing their hair almost flat it was just like Karl's here and there but it was pretty much flat and then a second bit if 1770s were quite crazy weave like the big tall hair but then if you had told Herod they weren't all curly which is something that like cheap wigs don't really get because they're always like but it kind of looks like a birthday cake which is not necessarily what they did like if you look at Marie Antoinette and other royals from the ER it's the hairstyles like really really big it's also kind of like smoothed out so this is something that they always get wrong and like this outfit doesn't really help is the top layer kind of looks like Burton's again I just don't think it's very thought through this is awful like if this looks really really modern like you can tell she's just wearing a bra underneath which is obviously not what you were in 18th century I think in this case it wasn't like the concept it wasn't like oh that's my let's make them a you know he's darkly inaccurate I just think they didn't really care which is sad because like the foam is good so I'd rate the costumes in this film like five out of ten Oh Miller so let's move on to Anna Karenina 2k12 and this is a very interesting case because if you compare it to the film we just talked about it's kind of a similar case because it's a case of costumes being modernized and like not historically accurate but in this case it was done so like the costume designer actually actually knew what it was supposed to look like and mixed it with her own ideas because I think that was so woman she took um 1860 the 1970s fashion and she mixed it with like 1915 40s and 50s jars new look and you can you can see that like you can see there's and the idea behind it I think what's important when it comes to like mixing styles and modernizing silhouettes is when you see a screen cap from a film you still know which era that was supposed to be there are some films that are kind of playing around with the idea and like trying to modernize the clothes but then if you like take the take a still from the film you can't tell when it's set and I think that's not what the costume should be like I think it should still give you like still don't give you like the feel of the era that the movie set in and I think Anna Karenina that that's that pretty well but since we're judging historical accuracy obviously crazy colors call our score the asymmetrical bonuses are not very circley accurate and some of them look a bit like modern wedding gums but in this case if you have a look at other costumes they're capped in like pretty much the same tone and the same idea it's kind of implemented in them so I think that's really interesting because that shows that this wasn't like you know it wasn't like Keira I just walked in and she was like you know what I kind of I don't really dig this like 1870s look at me can we do like new you can you look no it wasn't like that like you can clearly tell that was the designers idea and she was like let's just like let's continue with this theme because the whole film is this sort of like theatrical look the film doesn't even try to be historically accurate so I think when it comes to costumes it works pretty well but since we're rating historical historical accuracy I'd say this one is like 6 out of 10 even though I really like I admired the idea and I really get it like I get what she was trying to say let's move on to my costume love which is Barry Lyndon and I think the film is important to me because I think it's one of the earliest examples of a pure drama where we're such and like attention to costumes was actually brought because before that costumes were kind of like adaptations of previous fashions like no one had ever tried recreating like historical fashions one to one like the cuts were always modernized Spira linda was kind of a film work yuri was like no let's just do it the way they did it what's a better way to show an era properly than to follow you know original sources and I think it really shows and what I really loved about this film is the silhouette is copied 100% even the way her boobs look it's just like literally what you see on like fashion plates which is amazing it's really hard to achieve that and also like the choice of actors is kind of like he didn't choose the actors because they looked good he chose the actors because they looked like they stepped out of eighteenth-century like if you have a look at the guy that that plays like one of the priests or someone just his face is I'm pretty sure I've seen his face before on 18th century portraits as same goes for like Marissa but but however her name is god dammit she just literally looks like from a fashion plate or like a portrait if I have to nitpick there was this one character that had her hair straight and she had like bangs she was supposed to be like a poor lady on the countryside but I was like sure thing she sure would work bangs but that was literally and I think she didn't work Carson as well but that was literally the only the when anyway kind of like but otherwise I mean the whole film is stunning but the costumes are amazing and especially that I don't know what her name is in the movie but like the main female characters clothes are just like damn this is probably the only dress I don't really like and it's still kind of historically accurate so I don't like the hair in this she looks like an onion but like this one I'm just lying that's that's like costume girls right there so many details so many like weird accessories and stuff that appeared on the portrait and then some somehow they kind of disappear when people copy them into reality like if people design costumes and they kind of abandon all of the weird stuff that appeared and like if you have a look at 1780s costumes a lot of weird stuff up here like they had some weird scarves something tied around their you know elbow or something and if you like abandon all of this it's just going to look so much worse and it's going to look so much more generic what I admire about this film is that they never abandoned any of those like tiny weird details look at the baby like how many layers of clothes does it have on its head like one two three that's exactly what they did like they just used it a huge amount of fabric on anything just so they could show how rich they were so that makes complete sense to kind of recreate this look instead of going like oh no I'm pretty sure she would wear like minimalistic stuff no she wouldn't like no one knew what minimalistic meant back then so like for Barry Lyndon I would say that's like a strong eight and a half to nine out of ten when it comes to costume accuracy I need to change the battery sorry okay I have like 10 more films to talk about but I feel like this video is already gonna be an hour long so I'm not gonna do it I'm not gonna talk about it I don't know what what's going on - my English today I'm a bit worried to be honest cuz it's horrible I don't really get what they shoe is here like I've been using it every day for the front of us a year what the hell is going on but either way I hope you enjoyed it and if you any kind of films you would like me to write since I'm such an expert now I'm happy to do it well I'm happy to tell you the truth and one more thing for my next video like whatever it is I want you to think of a clickbait I could use and just write it in the comments like hey let's have like a clique big competition cuz I've always wanted to do it and I'm always like yeah but I don't know what the next video is gonna be but I'm at the point where I don't really care I'm just gonna make a stupid video about anything and then you know I'm gonna call it whatever is the best click wait so I made it best [Music]

Channel: Karolina Żebrowska

Views: 302,624

Rating: 4.9612985 out of 5

Keywords: period drama, costume, costume design, historically accurate, costume review

Id: irGJJ1vtNR4

Length: 13min 22sec (802 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 29 2017