situations for many, many hours.” And while we are waiting for the camera to roll we are on our

feet—wearing ugly shoes and comfortable clothes.

At its best, making movies can be scandalously fun and bear an uncanny resemblance to an
adult summer camp. At its worst, it’s an insane asylum or a prison sentence with a release date.
This is not an industry secret. Our dismal working conditions, long hours, and meal breaks are
regulated in minute detail under our union and guild contracts. The gauntlet of film production
is covered in a proliferation of books about motion picture producing, directing, writing, and act—
ing. But the creative process and practice that a costume designer follows (research, collaboration,
and designing) is conspicuously absent on the bookshelf.

Researching the history of motion picture costume design is particularly problematic. The
paper trail inherent to conventional businesses does not exist in the movie industry. All of the major
film studios have been bought and sold (especially over the last thirty-five years), becoming satellites
of large multinational conglomerates, and with each new acquisition paper records are jettisoned,
and archival information becomes more difficult to retrieve. Studios routinely discard ancillary
design materials from the costume and art departments, including costume design illustrations now
cherished by collectors. The Internet and specialty auction houses have become an active market—
place for movie memorabilia such as costume illustrations, costumes, and props. But a wealth of
prosaic paperworkwcostume budgets, continuity photographs, costume change breakdowns, and
fabric swatch books—is dumped after a film has been released and the need for reshoots has ended.
Not long after a movie has wrapped, its entire costume department disappears.

This information vacuum has been the reason for much of the misunderstanding about the
role of the costume designer on a film and the function that costume plays in telling the story. The
absence of such evidence reinforces the popular impression that costumes simply appear when
summoned by a director. But costumes do not design themselves; they don’t arrive in the morn—
ing with the actor nor do they spontaneously materialize from somewhere within the collective
unconscious. Costume design plays a serious role in the movies: it helps bring authentic charac—
ters to life. It is an art in its own right, with its own standards and legitimacy. In mainstream and
independent Hollywood film, costume design exists solely to serve the story and its characters.

Dressed collects the work, and the words, of scores of important costume designers from
throughout the history of Hollywood—along with first-person comments from directors, actors, col—
laborators, and cinephiles. Along the way, it illuminates the creative path costumes travel from script
to screen, and demystifies such loose concepts as so-called screen style and the mellifluous but mis—
taken moniker “fashion in film.” Ultimately, everyone involved in the making of a motion picture is
engaged in conjuring human beings as if from thin air: “trying to come up with characters surpris—
ing to people and surprising to me,” as writer/ director Wes Anderson has put it. If the first rule of
screenwriting is “Show, don’t tell,” costume is a key to that process because it subtly telegraphs every—

thing the audience needs to know about a character before one word of dialogue is spoken.

irectors are acutely aware that the costume expresses volumes to the audience before
the actor speaks. Simple details reveal volumes about character and scene—a cuff, a
lapel, lipstick on a collar. “The right hat is very important,” writer/director Cecil B.
DeMille said. “Shoes don’t matter so much. Usually, you don’t even see them. But if you wear a

hat, it’s in every shot and featured in every close—up.” Subtle signals are embedded throughout

xvi INTDODUCTION