© 2014 Lord Christopher Laverty. All rights reserved.
Internal Affairs (1990) is an excellent stone cold thriller. The costumes are a subtle tease, revealing personal information that the characters never say out loud. Like many movies released in the late 1980s/1990s, Internal Affairs radiates uneasiness caused by shifting … Continue reading
© 2014 Lord Christopher Laverty. All rights reserved.
“We are stardust, we are golden”, sang Joni Mitchell of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, held August 15-18th 1969, at a dairy farm in the Catskills near the hamlet of White Lake in the town of Bethel, New York. … Continue reading
© 2014 Lord Christopher Laverty. All rights reserved.
Director Brian De Palma has made movies heavily influenced by Alfred Hitchcock before, but Passion (2012) is the first one whose characters look like they stepped out of one of Hitchcock’s classic films. Karen Muller-Serreau’s bold and colourful costumes communicate … Continue reading
© 2014 Lord Christopher Laverty. All rights reserved.
Chances are you have not seen Snowpiercer yet due to its limited availability and release fiasco. If so, skip this interview and watch the film first. Go in clean, because Snowpiercer really is as good as everyone’s telling you. Based … Continue reading
© 2014 Lord Christopher Laverty. All rights reserved.
SPOILERS From a costume point of view, and therefore a character point of view, The Grand Budapest Hotel (directed by Wes Anderson) is all about uniforms; those worn by men and women in official capacities and those adopted as a … Continue reading
© 2014 Lord Christopher Laverty. All rights reserved.
Where to start with Penny Rose? Pirates of the Caribbean? Evita? King Arthur? Most recently of course 47 Ronin (directed by Carl Rinsch). You do not hire Penny Rose for something small. This is not to say she won’t work … Continue reading
© 2014 Lord Christopher Laverty. All rights reserved.
SPOILERS Despite all the hoo-ha over films such as Blue Jasmine and Stoker contemporary is still pretty much overlooked as a form of costume design. If it’s invisible, well, nobody notices it, and if it’s designer it becomes all about … Continue reading
© 2014 Lord Christopher Laverty. All rights reserved.
In the very opening scene of Rocky (1976, costume designer Robert Cambel), we see the title character in the ring, bare chested, hands encased in boxing gloves, the picture of sporting violence and masculinity. But this is no more than … Continue reading
© 2014 Lord Christopher Laverty. All rights reserved.
Costume designer Mark Bridges described There Will Be Blood (2007) as his most challenging film, referring to the difficulties he faced in transporting costumes to the remote location in West Texas, after director Paul Thomas Anderson called for a new … Continue reading
© 2014 Lord Christopher Laverty. All rights reserved.
For this month’s Fabric of Cinema column in pan-India publication Arts Illustrated, Clothes on Film editor Christopher Laverty discussed the game changing costume design work of Trish Summerville. This makes that terrible title pun you’ve just read almost acceptable. The … Continue reading