"Mr, DeMiH/e added a ‘vrsion' set in ancient Babylon In which / would wear a dress of pearls and feuth

ers and be tossed into a den of real lions. Designer Mitchell Leisen had an entire crew working on the
pearl gown and headdress." —Giorio Swanson
Male and Female (7979} - Mitchell Leisen. costume designer

beads. On the desert island I would wear animal skins. I would also have an elaborate bathtub
scene wearing nothing at all. . . .”

The role of the costume designer was gaining stature. Studio chiefs, directors, and producers
recognized the power of costume to create the look and feel of a movie, and deliver the female
audiences to the theater. The first costume designers may have thought of themselves as fashion
designers, but they were costume designers in everything but title. They were interpreting charac»
ter in costume. Costume helped actors communicate character when movies were silent and the
dialogue delivered by title cards. In the next decade costume design would evolve in all aspects, as
realistic films became more naturalistic and “spectaculars” even more spectacular.

As the output of the studios expanded exponentially throughout the decade, the benefits of
obtaining costumes quickly and inexpensively became increasingly important to each studio’s
bottom line. Flourishing studios, who had been employing costume designers on a freelance
basis, now hired them full time. By decade’s end, many studios were providing a restaurant (the
studio commissary), a barber shop, and a fully staffed wardrobe department, helping them lure
the cast and crew back on set more quickly and wasting less valuable time, The movies had barely
been around for a decade when journalist Nance Monde wrote in the August 1918 issue ofMotion
Picture Magazine: “Clothes, clothes, clothes—Everybody knows, You can’t get on in the picture

game—Without clothes, clothes, clothes!”