As seen in multiple previous posts, costumes have always been incredibly important in films – they make a character, inspire cinema goers and fashion designers and even generate trends. Yet, while most costume designers years ago tended to design unique costumes and make them in famous tailoring houses that mainly worked for the cinema, nowadays things have slightly changed.
Some costume designers have turned indeed into stylists and, sometimes to save money and do things at a quicker pace, they borrow from a specific fashion designer whose vision may fit with a particular character's personality. Fashion designers are usually pretty keen to give a hand and clothes for a film as this practice may represent a great product placement.
Yet strange things are happening nowadays that make you wonder if fast rhythms and reduced budgets are having an impact on costumes as well. Dilemmas happened for example with Starz' recent TV series American Gods taken from Neil Gaiman's eponymous novel. Costume-wise this is an interesting series since the clothes make the character/the god.
There were characters that went through some changes compared to the novel, one of them is Technical Boy. The obese computer-whiz who "wore a long black coat, made of some silky material" and "appeared barely out of his teens: a spattering of acne glistened on one cheek" in the novel, has been left behind to be replaced by an incredibly cool but immensely annoying and vicious young guy who loves vaping and wearing the sort of expensive street clothes you may see on the runways.
Played by Bruce Langley, this young and powerful god who looks like a club kid but may also be one of these young man made rich by an app or a social media site (even though deep down he's just a sadistic violent villain...) represents our collective devotion, obsession and addiction to the Internet and a new and modern deity clashing with the old and traditional mythical gods.
Full or arrogance and hubris, and hating the old gods that do not seem to be able to update to new technologies, he states in the first episode about the new gods: "Now we have reprogrammed reality. Language is a virus. Religion, an operating system, and prayers are just so much fucking spam."
In a way Technical Boy is the victim of technology, but he is also the victim of fast fashion changes: his looks morph every time he appears on the show and he updates quickly as the Internet does. Emmy-winning costume designer Suttirat Anne Larlarb may have therefore been rather busy working on his attire.
Something interesting and related to this character happened in the last episode of Series 1: when Technical Boy offers Bilquis (Yetide Badaki) a new altar and gives her a cell phone, he his wearing a T-shirt that looks like a Marcelo Burlon's County of Milan top.
You wonder if it may be an original one or a copy: the T-shirt he wears can't indeed be find on the official site of the brand but seems to be a mix of prints from previous collections with some colours from the S/S 2016 season.
The nearest thing to it is a shirt that appears on an Aliexpress page produced when you search the words "Golden Milan Online Shopping": the manufacturer claims they have "the Marcelo Burlon brand permision (sic) in China Mainland", but, surprise, the manufacturer sells the shirts at $29.89 a piece, a fraction of the original price.
Now, this makes you wonder: if the shirt in the TV series is original, but it is not part of a specific County of Milan collection, why didn't the brand try to advertise this "collaboration" to capitalise on it? Besides, if it is an original and the Aliexpress manufacturer has the right to reproduce the designs in China, well, they cost a fraction of the price you're buying them at in Europe; if it is a fake, well, the money for costumes is more or less finished and costume designers struggling with budget restrictions have turned to the Internet to find cheap deals.
In the same episode Technical Boy wears a sort of samurai jacket that looks made of Luminex, an optical fibre textile.
Perfectly reproducing the glow from our phones, tablets and laptops (and a material that wasn't available when the novel was written, so it perfectly represents our times), Luminex has actually been favoured on the runways by Federico Sangalli in Italy and Zac Posen in the States, but, you naturally wonder, was this material sourced from the original manufacturer or is this just a fake version (jackets and evening gowns made using optical fibres on Aliexpress aren't so cheap, but there are also tablecloths that may be more affordable and easy to turn into a jacket...).
And what about the butterfly high-heel shoes Easter (Kristin Chenoweth) wears in the same episode: are those by Sophia Webster or are they imitations? Who knows.
It would be interesting to know what's original/genuine and what's "inspired to" in today's productions. Why? Well, if a design is real a costume designer may be accused of clever product placement; if it is an imitation it would mean that the production company has saved some money, but it is infringing a copyright.
County of Milan/Sophia Webster do not seem to have provided answers to this conundrum as there are no available statements from the brands about their products being in this series at the time of writing, but Burlon may have found the ultimate solution: he will be on the sixth edition of the reality "Pechino Express" (that will be broadcast by Italian TV channel Rai2 from September), that follows a series of couples during a trip across different countries.
Guess that, if you're a fashion designer and you can't convince the costume designer of a TV series/film/show to dress a character/presenter in your own original clothes, you may as well try and star in the programme, so that you can always use yourself to place your own products in the series.
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