The costume vault

This is not a review. This is not even an article. This is a love letter to a woman that taught us all to be defiant. To not conform with what society asks of you. To be open and honest about our problems. And to always do it with a smile and a joke. To be positive, even in the face of tragedy. This is a love letter to Carrie Fisher; the princess, the icon, and the woman underneath it all. Carrie Fisher, to me, and to most of us, was more than just an actress. Even more than just a character. She was the embodiment of strength, determination and honesty. So much honesty. She never recoiled from saying whatever she was feeling at the time. She never backed down from defending what she believed in. If she felt something needed to be said, she would say it. She kept no facade. No "character" mask. She showed herself to the world in her integrity; the good, the bad and whatever fell in the middle. That was her mantra: truth came first. For good and for worse. And t...

Good day, beautiful readers!! First of all, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone! Today is a very special day for me, here at The Costume Vault . It's our anniversary!!! We're celebrating our third anniversary! Though to be honest, I didn't actually start this project seriously until last year... So, I'm a three-year-old, with the experience of a one-year-old...? Oh, who cares. Today, three years ago, I published our first article ever. So, today is a day of celebration. This project started out of a deep love for movies and costuming and a need to share that. And also boredom... I had quite the free time back then, to be honest. But the project took off, and now I continue even when I don't have as much free time. But it's worth it because I get to share my love for movies and costuming with you. To this day, I've written sixty articles, most of which I am quite proud of indeed. And what's even better, you seem to enjoy reading ...

The dressmaker , despite its many flaws, is a fascinating movie to look at. And what makes it particularly interesting for me, is that it's a movie where the Costume Design happens to be what drives most of the visual narrative of the story. Last week I had a look at Tilly's costume (by Margot Wilson) and how these define her and her arc throughout the movie, but, no matter how impressive Tilly's wardrobe is, it's only one half of the picture. It's Marion Boyce's work on the townsfolk around our main character that completes this mesmerizing ensemble. Because of it, I feel it would be unfair to ignore this other half and therefore chose to divide this into two parts in order to better develop each of the sides. And so, without further ado, let's dive into the other half of this equation. DUNGATAR AND THE MAKEOVER FEVER Dungatar is a fictional run-down street of houses in the middle of the Australian outback that tries to disguise itself as a tow...

2015's The Dressmaker is the wet dream of any costume lover in all of its 120 minutes of runtime. The Aussie film directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse is the adaptation of the Rosalie Ham's homonymous novel. After quite an impressive run in the Festival Circuit (it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival) and garnishing numerous nominations and wins worldwide, it finally got a theatrical release, becoming a box office success and the 11th highest-grossing film of all time in its home country. So there certainly was a lot of hype around it when I finally got to see it and had a lot of expectations to live up to. ABOUT THE MOVIE So, is the movie actually that good? ... Sort of? Well, it's complicated. That's my official review tagline: it's complicated . The thing is; the movie has a ton of problems of all sorts. A lot of it doesn't work, but what does work, works really well. Let's start with the negatives. First of all, the movie is a t...