With a career spanning over four decades, four Academy Awards, and collaborations with some of the most acclaimed directors of the century, Milena Canonero is a legendary figure in costume design whose talent contributed to the creation of modern cinematic myths. As stated by former Berlinale Director Dieter Kosslick, her excellence lays not only ‘in the art of subtly accentuating a character’s personality but also in enhancing the texture of a film through very detailed and original designs’. Her particular focus on colour – already visible in the contraposition between black and white in the droogs’ outfit in A Clockwork Orange (Kubrick, 1971) – was brought to the spotlight thanks to the costumes she created for Marie Antoinette (2006).  But it was not until her collaboration with Wes Anderson that colour truly acquired the suggestive and symbolic power that enriched her creations with multiple layers of meaning.

With Sophia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette (2006), Canonero won her third Oscar, after Barry Lyndon (Kubrick, 1975) and Chariots of Fire (Hudson, 1981). In the colours and textures employed, the fashion at the cinematic Versailles looks like the desserts in which the queen is seen indulging in multiple scenes. In fact, Canonero was inspired by a box of Ladurée macarons received by Coppola as a gift. The colour palette, then, was mainly constituted by pastel hues, with one significant exception: Madame Du Barry (Asia Argento), King Louis XV’s maitresse-en-tître. In fact, the colours of the dresses convey important unspoken messages throughout the film, a technique which Canonero later extensively employs in her collaboration with Wes Anderson. In the case of Madame Du Barry – whose relationship with the king Marie Antoinette historically deplored – the personal contrasts between mistress and queen, as well as their inherently opposite nature, are emphasised by the contrasting shades they wear. While Marie Antionette (Kirsten Dunst) and her retinue flaunt highly elaborate dresses in pastels and neutrals, Du Barry wears rich, luxurious colours like deep blue, burgundy and purple, even in bed, revealing her lascivious personality and conduct. The only moment in which the queen and her friends depart from their classic pastels is during the masquerade ball, in which they wear emerald green and black, allowing themselves to become their alter-egos and disobey the rules of the court. Emblematically, it is at this ball that Marie Antoinette, who is wearing a black dress with a matching sheer blindfold, meets Count Fersen (Jamie Dornan), delving for the first time into the same territory of affairs and lovers as Du Barry.

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Only two years before Marie Antoinette, Wes Anderson asked Canonero to work on the costumes of his new project freely inspired by the life of underwater filmmaker Jacques-Yves Cousteau: The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004). This was the beginning of a collaboration that still continues today, characterised by a precise work of coordination which ensures consistency throughout the film, especially in terms of colour palette. Colour is, in fact, fundamental for Anderson in establishing a mood that contrasts grim situations with the levity and fairy-tale-like appearance of his characters and mise-en-scène. Canonero has compared it to the musician’s approach to a melody: ‘colours have their own music, and Wes cares a lot that all of them hit the right notes’.

In The Life Aquatic, Canonero’s wardrobe choices echoed Anderson’s references to the French filmmaker. The red watch cap, one of the most memorable and iconic pieces worn by Zissou, was a characteristic feature of Cousteau and his crew, usually paired with a light blue shirt. Canonero recreated all these elements for the Belafonte’s crew, giving predominance to primary colours like red, blue and yellow. Conveying Anderson’s trademark levity, the movie narrates Zissou’s mission to kill a mysterious sea-creature that has eaten his best friend, yet the whimsical element of the red cap, worn with every outfit, formal or casual, prevents Bill Murray’s character from being taken too seriously.

Similarly, The Darjeeling Limited (2007) presents a contrast between the rich colours of India’s Rajasthan region and the grey suits worn by three brothers, protagonists of the movie. Francis (Owen Wilson), Peter (Adrien Brody) and Jack (Jason Schwartzman) embark on a spiritual journey, in an effort to bond and heal after their father’s death and reconnect with their mother (Anjelica Houston). Each one is wearing a different shade of grey, a gloomy colour which reflects their inner turmoil, externally represented by a set of bright orange suitcases which the brothers had inherited from their deceased father. Hand-painted by Anderson’s brother Eric, these suitcases were the result of a collaboration between Canonero, Anderson, Marc Jacobs and Louis Vuitton. Their warm tones reflect the colours of the locations in which the movie was shot, a practice embedded in Anderson’s film aesthetics. But their main function is to embody the physical and emotional luggage of which the brothers will free themselves at the end of the movie.

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The Grand Budapest Hotel (2015), the latest collaboration between the costume designer and the American director which earned Canonero her fourth Oscar, saw the fundamental involvement of two world-known Italian fashion houses: Fendi and Prada. Fendi created pieces for Tilda Swinton’s Madame D., an eighty-four year old aristocrat, described by Anderson as ‘an eccentric beauty and an art collector’. For her wardrobe, Canonero was inspired by the paintings of Gustave Klimt and Tamara de Lempicka and included some hand-painted patterns which clearly referenced the artists. Prada created Jopling’s (Willem Defoe) black leather coat, inspired by 1930s military dispatch riders and with a front lapel functioning as a secret weapons arsenal, as described by Anderson in the script. The dark tones worn by Jopling and Dimitri (Adrien Brody) were contrasted by the pink, purple and mauve tones of the Grand Budapest hotel and its staff’s uniforms, as well as by the unforgettable Mendl’s pastries and their boxes.

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Milena Canonero’s forty years of work have seen her involved in some of the most iconic and influential movies of the century. The partnerships with both directors and fashion houses she managed to secure throughout her career resulted in a deep trust that guaranteed communication and creative exchange, without the restrictions of a singular vision. In this way, her costumes deepen the audience’s understanding of each character, masterfully using colours to communicate unspoken truths or inner turmoil. The four Oscars and multiple awards won over the years are just emblems of her talent and genius, widely recognised by the film and fashion industries, as well as by audiences.

By Simona Mezzina

Sources:

https://www.primermagazine.com/2017/spend/the-life-aquatic-with-steve-zissou-menswear-at-the-movies

https://classiq.me/travelling-wes-anderson-style-the-darjeeling-limited

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/blogs/threadny/Costume-Designer-Milena-Canonero-Talks-Stanley-Kubrick-Getting-Inspired-By-Macaroons-124499284.html

https://www.berlinale.de/en/archiv/jahresarchive/2017/06b_berlinale_themen_2017/hommage_2017.html

Zoller Seitz, Matt. The Wes Anderson Collection: The Grand Budapest Hotel. London: Abrams, 2015.

Filmography:

A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, United States, 1971).

Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, United States, 1975)

Marie Antoinette (Sofia Coppola, United States, 2006)

The Darjeeling Limited (Wes Anderson, United States, 2007)

The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson, United States, 2015)

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Wes Anderson, United States, 2004)

‘Tis the season for wrapping everything under the tree up with a bow. This year, to borrow a phrase from the great Diana Vreeland, why don’t you consider trimming yourself with ribbons too? There is nothing quite as festive as a velvet bow pinned neatly under atop the crown of the head or a strand of silk looped around the end of a braid. The appeal of the ribbon as a hair accessory is, however, no seasonal trend–it perhaps one of the most timeless adornments. 

Ribbon-making likely dates back to the early Middle Ages, when the invention of the horizontal loom allowed for the creation of more complex woven textiles. Ribbons quickly became a sartorial trend, pinned to clothing and wrapped into hairstyles. Chaucer notes the existence of ‘ribbands’ as accessories in his work. Visual evidence of the popularity of ribbons is widespread throughout Renaissance works, worn in great, swooping quantities by Filipo Lippi’s angels and as a dainty crown of bows in Lorenzo Lotti’s more secular Portrait of a Woman Inspired by Lucretia. 

As the Renaissance came to a close, a more specific trend in ribbon-adorned hairstyles took hold: that of the lovelock. Worn almost exclusively by men in the late 16th and early 17th century, the lovelock was a long strand of hair worn draped over the chest and often tied with a bow or a rose made from ribbon. The lovelock was a deeply sentimental style, intended to signify the wearer’s romantic devotion to their beloved as it drew emphasis towards the heart. 

In the late 18th century, the Dutch engine loom once again revolutionised the production of ribbon, allowing for six different types of ribbons to be produced simultaneously on a single loom. This industrial innovation spurred an unprecedented frenzy for ribbons of all kinds, which is apparent in the styles of Rococo France. Both men and women of the time were draped with ribbons and bows from the tops of tall wigs down to the pointed toes of effeminate court shoes. 

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After the fall of the French monarchy, ribbons remained a popular accessory, even amongst those who had most vehemently opposed the Rococo style. Women who wore decidedly anti-Rococo Regency era dresses often topped their looks with bonnets bedecked in bows and flowers made from ribbon. These bonnets would remain popular for women throughout the 19th century, though ribbons as an accessory for men largely fell out of fashion. The Victorian affinity for elaborate braided hairstyles provided an ample canvas for yet more ribbon to be pinned into women’s hair. By the end of the century, a fashionable women’s hat could contain a decadent ten to twelve yards of ribbon–plus more woven into her tresses beneath. 

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In 1939, classic films Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz presented their respective starlets as pictures of wholesome femininity, their hair trimmed with bows of red and blue. Hair bows became stylish accoutrements for women of the silver screen and their fans. Bows took on flirtatious connotations, as evidenced by a 1944 spread from LIFE magazine that assigns various romantic meanings to the placement of a young lady’s hair bow, not at all dissimilar from the purpose of the lovelock popular over four centuries earlier. In contemporary Russia, the young woman’s hair bow had a far more political purpose. Girls wore two large, gauzy white bows known as bantiki as part of their school uniform to demonstrate their loyalty to the Soviet Union.

From Renaissance angels to stars of the silver screen, the hair bow has been a steadfast and stylish companion for nearly the entirety of written dress history. Well into the 20th century, French ingenues like Brigitte Bardot, Catherine Deneuve, and Anna Karina again made the hair bow a part of 1960s stardom, lending it a coquettish quality by styling it with winged eyeliner and short hemlines. In even more recent years, pop stars Madonna and Lady Gaga have put their outlandish touches on the ribbons in their hair as well, enlarging them to comical sizes and pairing them with clashing punk studs. Whether it is used to communicate romantic entanglements or political affiliations, ribbon is an infinitely customisable accessory, and looks just as pretty tangled in tresses as it does tied up under the tree.

Please note that the Documenting Fashion blog will be taking a brief holiday to make bows and be merry! We look forward to sharing dress history with you again regularly in the new year.

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By Ruby Redstone

Sources:

Anna Purna Kambhampaty, ‘From Marie Antoinette to JoJo Siwa, Hair Bows Have a Surprisingly Meaningful History,’ Time, published 14 August 2019, https://time.com/5642621/jojo-bows-history/.

FIT Fashion History Timeline, ‘Love Lock,’ published 10 August 2018, https://fashionhistory.fitnyc.edu/love-lock/.

Katya Soldak, ‘This is How Propaganda Works: A Look Inside a Soviet Childhood,’ Forbes, published 20 December 2018, https://www.forbes.com/sites/katyasoldak/2017/12/20/this-is-how-propaganda-works-a-look-inside-a-soviet-childhood/?sh=2a927cd33566.

National Museum of American History, ‘For your Easter bonnet: Silk ribbons,’ published 13 April 2017, https://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/easter-ribbons.

‘Ribbons,’ Encyclopedia online, accessed 17 December 2020, https://www.encyclopedia.com/sports-and-everyday-life/fashion-and-clothing/clothing-jewelry-and-personal-adornment/ribbon#:~:text=Ribbons%20were%20so%20identified%20with,Knights%20of%20Bath%20wear%20red.

John Galliano graduated from Central Saint Martins in 1984, and eight years later Lee Alexander McQueen followed suit. Two of their collections from the mid- nineties, Galliano’s Princess Lucretia (spring/summer 94/95) and McQueen’s Highland Rape (autumn/winter 95/96) use women’s bodies as a medium beyond clothing. Both use historical narratives to emotional and aesthetic effect, and both are fascinated with hierarchical power dynamics and violence against women.

Galliano’s show was built on an invented fairy-tale narrative, inspired by a Vanity Fair article which detailed a DNA connection between the Romanovs and the Duke of Edinburgh. Galliano’s Princess Lucretia runs away from the 1860s crinolines and hoops skirts of her Russian upbringing to Scotland. On her escape train, she meets a polka-dotty duke and duchess, who introduce her to parties. She becomes “naughty”, drinking, smoking and gambling, before falling in love with a lord and living happily ever after in reimaginings of Madeleine Vionnet’s bias-cut dresses. This magical realist narrative allows for the corseted, extremely unwieldy shapes of the mid-nineteenth century to metamorphose into the lithe and figure-hugging silks of the nineteen twenties in one performance.

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Galliano’s show also follows the narrative of the seeming emancipation of a young woman’s body after the First World War. However, the ideal boyish figure of the twenties was by no means less restricted. Though it took up less space than the hoop-skirted silhouettes we see at the beginning of the show, the binding of breasts and pushing down of hips through corselets was hardly comfortable or natural. By the nineties, these techniques of reducing the appearance of secondary sexual characteristics had been internalised through dieting, exercise, and, at times, starvation. Where Galliano’s show foregrounded a fairy tale narrative featuring the recognisable historical shapes of crinolines and bias-cuts, McQueen’s story was far more abstract. His historical starting point was the eighteenth-century Jacobite rebellion, reinvented as a tale of masculine English domination and violation of a Scotland that is codified as feminine and natural.

In Highland Rape, the beginning of McQueen’s fascination with what Stephen Seely terms the “becoming non-human of the wearer’s body” is visible. Such de-humanising has long been used as a method of patriarchal control, as evidenced in the consideration of undergarments from the 1860s through the 1920s. For Seely, however, this can also “problematize the privileged Western binaries of human/animal, organic/inorganic, real/artifice, and male/female.” These binaries are made evident in the lace that McQueen features throughout the collection. At times, it is a matte pale blue, that trains off in tendrils down the model’s legs, resembling a cornflower meadow turned upside down. At others, it is painted over with iridescence, like the scales of a fish. Later, the lace becomes dark green and seems almost moss-like, matching up with the clumps of scrub which decorate the edges of the catwalk, through which the photographers’ cameras leer, like predators waiting to pounce.

Using rape as metaphor in art is uncomfortable and risky, particularly when that art involves real women’s bodies in varying states of nudity as part of the performance. When it was suggested to McQueen that the collection was misogynous, he was deeply upset, stating that he was “very close” to his oldest sister who had been abused by her husband. “All you want to do is make women look stronger (…),” he said, “I want to portray the way society still sees women in some ways, not the way I see women.” McQueen’s focus on personal experience over public narrativization is key in Highland Rape, but it is also problematised by his use of lesser-known models who, given the precarious nature of their occupation, might not have able to give full consent in the use of their bodies in the show.

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This was not the case for Princess Lucretia. In Catwalk, we see Galliano directing Kate Moss backstage. The tiered blue skirt billows out behind her as she runs, her torso emerging childlike from the top, tiny in comparison to the sea that swallows the rests of her body. The name “Lucretia” has obvious connotations of rape (the tale of the Roman woman’s assault has been retold many times), but there are other signs of vulnerability. The soundtrack of Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kijé is cut through with the sound howling wolves, the threat of the traditional wolf whistle transferred from man to animal. Galliano instructs Moss that, when she hears the wolves, to “stop” in order “to make the dress go really forward”. The suggested whiplash of fear in her heart is communicated through the momentum of the dress.

In both shows, the models wear matted hair extensions, mismatched and straggly. These accentuate their jerky and uncomfortable movements, adding to the sense of the physical suffering they have endured. Where Galliano’s models look back behind them as they come out onto the runway, the women in McQueen’s show stare at the audience as they return. Certain models were given sclera contacts lenses which cover the whole eye and make it black. These empty-seeming eyes evoke the blank stare of a survivor’s dissociation. The lenses also act like black mirrors, reflecting the onlookers’ faces. These models glare back at the audience, challenging them to examine themselves and their assumptions.

By Alexandra Sive

For many, the arrival of winter brings with it a longing for summer. The cold has a way of expunging memories of sweaty afternoons spent with a cold drink pressed to the forehead in a desperate attempt to cool down. In a playful confrontation of this sensorial paradox, Maison Martin Margiela’s Spring/Summer ’06 collection, shown just as winter crept into Paris in 2005, features necklaces, earrings, bracelets and belts strung with coloured ice cubes. Continuing a process that no doubt began with a hairdryer backstage, the bright stage lights and the heat from the bodies of the audience and models melt the ice so that the dye – green, purple, blue and pink – runs down the models’ skin and seeps into their white clothes.

Jewellery created from ice is an amusing play on the senses. Ice can have the transparency or the sparkle of a gemstone and feels cool to the touch just like jewellery. For decades, hip-hop artists have used ice as a metaphor for diamond jewellery in reference to the optic and haptic crossovers. The obvious difference is that ice cubes, unlike diamonds, do not last forever. The water, artificially and temporarily frozen, therefore speaks to the artifice and temporality of fashion. Both the ice and the clothes are visually altered as time unfolds before the audience.

This visible change recalls Margiela’s ‘9/4/1615’ exhibition held in 1997 at Rotterdam’s Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, for which the clothes on display had been sprayed with living mould, yeast or bacteria. While the decay occurred at a slower rate than the melting of ice, each visitor would see a slightly different stage of development. Caroline Evans notes that each piece, recreated from the designer’s archive and decomposing before an audience, is ‘saturated with complex historical meanings’, hinting at Martin Margiela’s own complex relationship with history and time.

Martin Margiela’s personal and professional archive, unpacked in the 2020 documentary Martin Margiela: In His Own Words, is a testament to his reverence for the past. This obsessive accumulation and preservation of objects might appear at odds with his reputation for deconstruction. Rather than being rooted in any sense of destructive violence, however, his deconstructive practice was based in ‘care for the material object and sartorial techniques’, as noted by Alison Gill. In this way, Margiela’s particular brand of deconstruction can be considered much closer to conservation.

Watching pure white fabric stained haphazardly, like an ice lolly dripped on a cotton dress, has the potential to be jarring. Instead, something in the wet, candy-coloured mess created is enlivening and joyful. The grotesque mixture of melted ice and oil sticks the models’ hair to their skin and causes their makeup to bleed, engaging the audience’s haptic imagination. The streetcast models, who smile and dance, amplify this effect with their relatability. Just as Elizabeth Wilson notes that grunge recalls glamour, here, the grotesque is inviting. The effect, according to Vogue, is ‘a hot display of grittily glamourous womanhood [that could] reduce any man to a pool of water’. Unlike Shalom Harlow, dancing in distress as her dress was spray-painted by robot arms at Alexander McQueen’s show seven years earlier, Margiela’s models exude cool acceptance as the recently frozen water spreads across their skin. Rather than destruction, or even creation, this is something more passive and voyeuristic: decay, or, as Evans described the process at the exhibition, ‘decay without revulsion’.

By Lucy Corkish

Sources

Maison Margiela SPRING 2006 READY-TO-WEAR on Vogue Runway: Words by Sarah Mower, Photographs by Marcio Madeira (https://www.vogue.com/fashion-shows/spring-2006-ready-to-wear/maison-martin-margiela)

Caroline Evans, ‘The Golden Dustman: A critical evaluation of the work of Martin Margiela and a review of Martin Margiela: Exhibition (9/4/1615)’, Fashion Theory 2:1 (1998), pp. 73-93

Elizabeth Wilson, ‘A Note on Glamour’, Fashion Theory, 11:1 (2007), 95-108

Reiner Holzemer, Martin Margiela: In His Own Words, cinematographer Toon Illegems (2020; London: Dogwoof)

Alison Gill, ‘Deconstruction Fashion: The Making of Unfinished, Decomposing and Re-assembled Clothes’, Fashion Theory 2:1 (1998), pp. 25-49