Hollywood Costume Design

Dressed: A Century of Hollywood Costume Design is the latest book by Deborah Nadoolman Landis.

Landis knows her stuff: she's President of the Hollywood Costume Designers Guild and has been nominated for an Oscar for her designs--which include Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark, Blues Brothers, The Mask, Coming to America (with Eddie Murphy--that was the movie that got her nominated for an Oscar), Three Amigos, Trading Places, Animal House, and others--even Michael Jackson's Thriller video.

She's written other books, has a PhD in Costume Design, and she's also married to director/producer John Landis (which may be how she happened to work on Thriller--John Landis directed it).

Need more credentials? She created the red jacked Michael Jackson wore in Thriller, and as designer for the first Indiana Jones picture, she gets all the credit for his rugged look--fedora, whip, leather jacket, everything.

Dressed: A Century of Hollywood Costume Design covers the history of film costuming, from Sarah Bernhardt's 1912 costumes in the silent Queen Elizabeth to Pirates of the Carribean.

Decade by decade, Landis paints a picture of the great designers and stars, the crazy innovations, the occassional trends, and the iconic moments. What inspired those dresses that Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn wore in their most famous moments? To tell us, Landis draws on her personal database of anecdotes and trivia about movie costuming that she began keeping ten years ago.

Designers like Adrian, famous for his gowns in dozens of movies like The Philadelphia Story, Ninotchka, and The Great Waltz, who also did the costumes for Wizard of Oz, are covered. Givenchy, Edith Head, Ann Roth, etc.--nearly 600 pages of information. To top it off, Angelica Huston wrote the Foreword.

Landis uses on her own experience, telling tales about Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and others (her costume for him is on display in the Smithsonian).

Dressed includes over 800 sketches and photos of some of Hollywood's most iconic costumers, captioned with quotes from actors and designers. These include everything:

• The original sketch of the white sundress (designer: William Travilla) Marilyn Monroe wore in The Seven Year Itch (The one that flew up, that everyone thinks of when they think of Monroe.)
• The sketch of the pink dress Monroe wore when she sang "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend" in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
• The sketch and photo of Scarlet O'Hara's party dress, form the opening scenes of Gone With the Wind
• Sketches and photos from recent films like Ocean's 11, Little Miss Sunshine, Brokeback Mountain, Marie Antoinette, Borat, etc.

Costumes in movies, Landis has said in interviews, are one of the ways in which the story is told and the characters are defined. Their transitions and changes are reflected in the costumes they wear.

To illustrate, here's what Landis said in a panel discussion at the 2006 L.A. Film Festival. as reported by Variety.

In the movie Sabrina, Edith Head designed Audry Hepburn's early costumes--the pre-Paris look. When Sabrina comes back from France, she has changed. "Sabrina goes to Paris, starts working in Paris, has a benefactor, then comes back in Givenchy. . . . She could not have started that film wearing Givenchy."