Introduction

Clothes are never a frivolity: they always mean something.

—JAMES LAVER

ilmmakers aspire to seduce. Theirs is a consensual art. It is pure pleasure to be totally

immersed in an unfolding story. And great movies, regardless of genre, can produce an

intensely emotional and cathartic experience—a journey that is never forgotten. At

least, that’s the way it’s supposed to be. “A film isflor should be—more like music than like fic—
tion,” Stanley Kubrick said. “It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme—~what’s

behind the emotion, the meaning—comes later.” This may come as a surprise, but Dressed is not
really about clothes or style or fashion, and certainly not about celebrity. It’s about the magic and
the romance of the movies and the power of our collective imagination. It’s about falling in love.
To outsiders, filmmaking is a mystery. And from the way it’s covered in the press, costume
design for movies is even more confusing. Our product may be perceived as glamorous, but the mak~

ing of movies is certainly not. Ask any crew member. It’s hard physical labor; we work in trenches

and trucks, suffer hideous weather, long hours, institutional food, and bad motels. Francis Ford

Coppola knows it well: “This kind of work is really grueling. You’re in a lot of uncomfortable

OPPOSITE, "The moment I was dressed. the clothes and the make-up made me feel the person he was. I
began to know him, and by the time I walked onto the stage he was fully born." —Charlie Chaplin