Back in February you may remember I was a panelist at LCF's discussion on the influence of celebrity in fashion. Kate from Make Do Style's fabulous short film about a Wannabe-Wag was screened and there was lots of interesting debate. It was there that I met fellow panelist Tamar Jeffers McDonald, a lecturer in films studies. Tamar's latest book Hollywood Catwalk: Exploring Costume and Transformation in American Film has just been released and it's a fascinating read. Instead of simply exploring the history of costume in film, Hollywood Catwalk looks specifically at transformations in film through fashion - think Andy in The Devil Wears Prada and Sandy in Grease - which is a really interesting angle.
Tamar has been kind enough to answer a few questions for the blog, which is a treat for any film fans. And if like me you're fascinated by the relationship between fashion and Hollywood you should definitely add Hollywood Catwalk to your list of summer reads.
Your book Hollywood Catwalk has just been released. In a nutshell what does it explore?
I originally intended to write a straightforward book about film costume, but the longer I worked on the project, the more I realised the films that really interested me were ones that contained a transformation through clothes. This became a theme very early on in cinema – from its birth at the end of the 19th Century – but is still being worked through today and, fascinatingly, in very similar visual and thematic terms. We are all familiar with the moment where the librarian or high school nerd takes off her glasses and lets down her hair, to reveal that she is actually beautiful.
Hollywood films have been showing this scenario to us for decades! What I have found so fascinating in looking at transformation films too is just how the changing of clothes is supposed to impact on the internal self. The character has to be sufficiently altered by her new outfits to start getting what she wants – whether it’s success at work, as in The Devil Wears Prada – or a man, as in so many other films that use the transformation. On the other hand, it would be very worrying if she – and the transformed person is generally a she – could change completely just by trying on different clothes. Wouldn’t that mean her identity had never been very developed or stable in the first place...? What I totally love about the films, besides the emphasis they give to the costumes, is how hard they have to work to make the transformation both vital and not that significant, life-changing and really not altering anything at all.
In the past there were movie stars, now we seem to just have a varying array of celebrities. Do you think there are any actresses working today who have the magic of classic Hollywood icons?
I often ask myself this! I think it is easy on Oscar night or at the Met fashion gala when we see the contemporary stars go down the red carpet to think we are seeing ‘Classic Hollywood Glamour’. We have to remember though, that Hollywood stars from the 30s to 60s were signed to studios which controlled every aspect of their lives and images, telling them what to wear, who to date, where to be seen, changing their hairlines, outlines and even names.
Sandra Bullock's take on Hollywood Glamour at the Oscars
No star today has that pressure nor does she have the support of vast numbers of professionals to rely on for every aspect of her image. So while there is no denying the glamour and allure of, say, Sandra Bullock when she got her Best Actress Oscar this past March, that look will have been put together by a small team of people - stylist, star, designer, make-up, hair and jewellery people - hired for the event, not a huge group working for the same stars at the same studio for years and years. Today’s stars can’t hope to compete.
Of all the iconic costumes in film history which is your favourite and why?
I would have to say the white dress which Doris Day wears in Pillow Talk (1959). I love this dress! It was by designer Jean Louis who also made the famous black satin dress in Gilda (1946) and the notorious nude satin and sequins dress Marilyn Monroe wore to sing Happy Birthday to John F Kennedy. For Pillow Talk the producer decided to revamp Day’s image totally: she had become stuck in family-friendly roles and her success, which had been huge, was seen as slipping a little. The film’s producer, Ross Hunter, decided to showcase Doris’s fabulous body in ways that had never been done before on film and, since either she or her husband/agent was against breast display and cleavage, it was decided instead to make the back of the dress the focus instead.
The plot of the film involves a rivalry between the characters played by Rock Hudson and Day, who hate each other though they have never met, only talked on the phone. When he is in a night club and realises that the woman sitting behind is his enemy, he is intrigued to see her finally, but is unprepared for how gorgeous she looks. His first glimpse is of Day in a long white column of a dress, with a crisply cut-out back panel which highlight her bones and satiny skin, while the material is cut tight across her bottom. Though the front of the dress and the rest of the outfit are very modest - high neckline slashed above the collarbones, long white gloves, floor-length dress – and the pure white colour might suggest purity or even Puritanism, the nude back reassures us that Day’s character is completely aware of and confident in her body, sensuously enjoying both the feel of the dress on her skin and the attention it gets her from Hudson’s character.
Your next project focuses on Doris Day. What is it about her that you find so fascinating?
The fascinating thing about Doris Day to me is that everyone assumes she “always played a virgin”. This is a star who not only played all sorts of women in her 39 films – brassy showgirls as well as naive ingénues, mothers with children as well as single women and widows, and people with careers of all types and varieties of glamour, from heiress to lobster farmer, stagecoach guard to professor – but was very well-known to have been married three times before she was 27, and to have become a mother by 20. So neither the home life nor the on-screen roles seem to bear out the virginal myth of Day. I am interested therefore in why it is so widespread and permanent when it is so unfounded. In my next book I will be looking at Day’s performances across her film and TV career to see if she implies a kind of chastity or sex-aversion in her acting, but also looking at her portrayal in the media, across fan magazines, newspaper articles and journal pieces from the late 40s to the 70s, which is where I think the old maid idea actually comes from.
And finally, which five Hollywood films should every fashion fan have in their DVD collection?
I am probably going to surprise you with my choices! Call me a fashion heretic if you will but I think Doris Day is the unsung, unappreciated heroine of chic and other people who get far more noticed are over-rated....
1) Pillow Talk (Michael Gordon, 1959) Not only for the white dress but practically everything Doris wears. And the hats!
2) Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954) I saw this film when I was quite young and it has forever fixed in my head the idea of glamorous luggage! Grace Kelly’s character opens her gorgeous overnight bag to reveals a puff of tulle for a nightie, slippers and toothbrush. Her dresses, by Hollywood stalwart Edith Head, are gorgeous too and I also love the way that clothes are integral to the plot.
3) A Place In The Sun (George Stevens, 1951) More Edith Head gowns, this time adorning the beautifully dewy Elizabeth Taylor. Not only the frocks, but Taylor and co-star Montgomery Clift are ravishingly gorgeous, and the close-ups when they kiss some of the most intense in cinema.
4) Cleopatra (Joseph L Mankiewicz, 1963) More Elizabeth Taylor, here proving that she could be just as gorgeous in gold leaf and carpets as in Edith Head gowns.
5) Love Me Or Leave Me (Charles Vidor, 1955) Another Doris film to finish. This one purports to be set in the 1920s and there are beaded shimmy dresses in evidence, but the emphasis on curvy female bodies is much more 50s than 20s. Doris is fab though and looks great as she goes from rags to riches as jazz singer Ruth Etting.
Sandra Bullock image from AdMedia/Picapp.com
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