In a message dated 4/24/2006 3:33:08 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
As a >>person who teaches costume history to college students, ****************** When teaching the actual history of costume, movies can indeed be a pain in the ass. But if you're teaching design, and costuming, they can be most helpful. Especially in periods that are difficult with hoops and corsets and padding and other contraptions. Learning by example. "Gone With the Wind" can be helpful at showing how hoops move, and is full of the most helpful details as costume relates to character and changes....like removing hoops because of a change of fortune [now the skirt drags, how can you as a designer use that?] or the dilemma of Melanie arriving at Tara during the war in her night gown and nothing else.[Put her in something already at Tara: one of Careen's or Suellen's gowns. Plunket's solution is to put Melanie in the same skirt you saw Careen in before the war....emphasizing it because it is only tea length so a piece of black cloth is sewn to the bottom of it to make it reach the floor. It's thinking things through.] "Dangerous Liaisons" is helpful in seeing what you can achieve with panniers. Couple it with "Tom Jones" and you can see how the approach to construction of good design can make or break it. "DL" has respect for period methods whereas Tom Jones has perfectly good designs, all with zippers up the back...alas. "The Bostonians" and "Age of Innocence" shows students how they may have to deal with movement and sitting and such in a difficult period [cuirass bustle]. And a film like "The Piano" illustrates how using a period hair style we find strange or ugly enhances character [so "pretty" is not always the goal] and how using and mixing up "native" materials can create a sense of reality and interest [waistcoats made of Maori fabrics and the native woman who wears with her cast off European gown a top hat and tail coat.] If you're doing "A Doll's House", how can you make fashions look like Norway? What details will keep opera goers reminded of Seville in "Le Nozzi di Figaro?" But this is design....not history. However, it helps to know and respect history so you can formulate interesting feats like these to help make designs come alive. _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
