The costume vault

This past October, Costume Designer Janet Patterson, passed away. The four-time Oscar Nominee passing was somehow quite unexpected and very much ignored by much of the mainstream media, which is such an incredible shameful thing on their part. As a 19th century specialist, her work is rather brief (restraining itself to movie focused on that period of time). But that makes it no less impressive as it is, as it includes such costume design masterpieces as The Piano  (Jane Campion, 1993), The Portrait of a Lady  (Jane Campion, 1996), " Oscar and Lucinda (Gillian Armstrong, 1997), Bright Star (Jane Campion, 2009) and Far from the madding crowd (Thomas Vinterberg, 2015), which I actually included in my  Favorite Costume Designs of 2015 list (read here ). What all of her movies share, and in great part thanks to her, is an incredible sense of realism and sensibility. And, because of it, her work has become one of the best examples that accurate historical cost...

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art — Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night              And watching, with eternal lids apart,              Like Nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,              The moving waters at their priestlike task              Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,              Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask              Of snow upon the mountains and the moors —              No — yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,              Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,              To feel for ever its soft swell and fall,              Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, ...