The costume vault

Another year has come and gone and I am, once again, facing the difficult task of choosing the best of this past year. Fortunately, 2017 has been, overall, a pretty good year for costume design, which makes my job easier. A brief reminder needed: here I will not be looking at the quality of the movies themselves but at the quality of their costume design. Also, the list order is rather random. All of the designs mentioned below stand on their own and I don't think they can really be properly listed. And so, with that out of the way, I begin. I. MONSTROUS LOVE: Lady Macbeth . Designs by Holly Waddington Director William Oldroyd set himself to fail when he chose to adapt for his directorial debut the extremely harsh and complex novel  Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk by Nikolai Leskov's. And that would be all I would be saying about it except for the fact that he did not fail at all in this endeavor. Quite the contrary. Oldroyd delivered a bold and uncompromising movie ...

The nominations for the 90th Academy Awards are finally out and... they are a mixed bag for me. At least in the Costume Design Category, which is the one I'll focus on here today. These are the nominees for Best Achievement in Costume Design: BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. Costume Design by Jacqueline Durran I have talked at length before about Disney live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast , and not in a very positive light (see here ). It is no secret that I hate this movie and this Costume Design. So this nomination is really painful for me. Despite that hate, I must recognize that there are some parts of the design that I like and that are worthy to look at. Still, considering the amazing Costume Designs that we've seen this year ( Lady Macbeth ,  Wonder Woman ...), it is terribly unfair that this gets nominated only because it's Disney and because it's a grand and flashy Costume Design. DARKEST HOUR. Costume Design by Jacqueline Durran I still h...

In the first part of my detailed analysis of the evolving design for the crown in BBC's The Hollow Crown ( here ), I covered the whole first season and the designs for Richard II, Henry IV, and Henry V. In this second part, therefore, I'll continue this analysis by covering the second and last season of this Shakespearean adaptation, which includes the plays of Henry VI Part I , Part II and Part III and Richard III . So, without further ado, let's dive in. 4. Henry VI The second season covers the infamous chain of events known as the Wars of the Roses and it begins with Henry's infant son all grown up. Shakespeare's work covers, throughout three plays (which are condensed to two in the show), the tumultuous civil unrest throughout Henry VI's reign and his eventual fall from grace. Henry, as portrayed by the Bard, is a meek young man that despises conflict and prefers to pray than to rule. He is this naive, childlike man who is so pure in his inno...