The 67th Venice Film Festival kicks off in a couple of weeks' time, so yesterday night I had a look at some of my old notes about the second edition of this event that took place in 1934.
As much as this edition may sound so far back in time, it actually featured the same mix of genres we will see in September 2010, from romantic comedies and adventures to children’s movies, with film critics supporting Czech films Ecstasy by Gustav Machatý and Reka by Josef Rovenský and looking forward to seeing avant-garde American film Lot in Sodom by James Sibley Watson and Melville Webber (hopefully, I will have the time to explore their connections with fashion in future posts).
Among the films presented in that edition there was also The Invisible Man, directed by James Whale.
Adapted from the H.G. Wells novel by R.C. Sherriff and Philip Wylie, this film always fascinated me from a fashion point of view for different reasons.
First of all the bandaged look of Claude Rains starring as Jack Griffin, the scientist who invents the invisible serum, can lead to some wonderful debates about the use of masks in film and fashion.
Griffin's bandages, sunglasses and smoking jacket are indeed parts of an iconic look that entered film and fashion history.
A while back I found in an old film catalogue images of this film that portrayed Gloria Stuart, starring as Jack's girlfriend, talking to the outline of a man. These images somehow reinforced my fascination with The Invisible Man in connection with fashion and made me ponder a bit about reinventing this character and turning him into the protagonist of a modern fashion photoshoot.
I really think it would be extremely interesting to see how a modern photographer may represent such a disturbing and unnatural yet irresistible figure living on the margins of society.
In fact I think it would be even more intriguing to rediscover this figure in connection with further liminal creatures, taking inspiration also from the work of costume designer Vera West.
Despite having worked on many films from the 30s and 40s, West remains a much forgotten costume designer, for one main reason: though she did design glamorous gowns as well, her work mainly focused on monster films such as Dracula (1931), The Mummy (1932), Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and The Wolf Man (1941).
Born in New York in 1900, West enrolled at the Philadelphia Institute of Design, studying dressmaking with Lucile, famous for having staged in London some of the very first live runway shows in the history of fashion.
After she graduated, West started working for a fashion house in New York, but something went wrong while working there. There are different rumours about what happened to her, but, apparently, she was involved in some kind of sordid affair and eventually fled to Hollywood.
From 1928 she became a costume designer at Universal Pictures, at the same time as Jack Pierce started working in the make up department.
One interesting detail about West’s career is that she mainly focused on female characters in horror films, from monster’s girlfriends to their victims. West's women usually wore smart suits during the day and turned into glamorous icons of style for the night when they favoured Schiaparelli-inspired gowns.
Wedding dresses and night gowns abounded in West's wardrobe, as it is also proved by Mina (Helen Chandler)’s white satin dress in Dracula and Frankenstein’s fiancée's look in The Bride of Frankenstein, a movie that set the trend for every horror bride to come.
West also designed the costumes for the Monster (Boris Karloff), for Henry Frankenstein
(Colin Clive), Doctor Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger) and Minnie (Una O’Connor) in this film.
Yet the most successful look remains the bride's gown cut from white surgical sheets and accessorised with long gloves made out of bandages.
While there are no
costume sketches from any of the classic horror films left, it's easy to detect in West's work inspirations from her early forays into the world of haute couture.
In early 1947, West left her job at Universal and briefly returned to couture. In June of the same year she was found drowned in a swimming pool at her home. A mysterious note she left hinted at the fact she had been blackmailed for twenty-three years.
Interestingly enough, costumes and looks by Vera West resurfaced here and there in different fashion collections. While the monster's shaggy coat in Son of Frankenstein (1939) reappeared in Rodarte's A/W 09 collection, that perfect mix of glamour, gothic inspirations, death and horror that seems to prevail in many contemporary collections maybe derives more from these old films than from our modern times.
In fact I actually think it would be very interesting to tackle in a modern photoshoot issues such as marginality and identity, through outcasts, quintessential liminal beings with benevolent and dangerous powers and resourceful young women who survive serial killers, monsters and threats like many of the heroines West dressed.
Besides, such a photoshoot would also be an interesting way to pay homage to early specialty top designers who had traditionally training in fashion and haute couture like West.
As inspirations for photographers, costume designers and stylists, I'm embedding here an extract from Earle C. Kenton’s House of Dracula (1945) and the trailer for Jean Yarbrough's She-Wolf of London (1946). Hope they'll help you developing moodboards on stylish states of liminality.
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