The Costume Sketch II

Gilbert Adrian had a long career as a movie costume designer beginning in the early 1920s, followed by the launching of his own line in 1942. He had retired by the time he drew this fashion sketch in 1958. One can still recognize his style in his spare, stylized method of drawing.  Each costume designer had their own unique style of costume sketching, although some used sketch artists to give better looking renderings or just to save time. The individual style helps identify the designer, useful since they often didn't sign all of their sketches. These two are not signed by Adrian, for example, but they are unmistakably his sketches.

Here is another costume sketch done by Adrian in 1932 for Greta Garbo in Mata Hari.Garbo plays a WW I spy, and this costume personifies her character - bare and exposed at her back, with a hard metalic and beaded front reaching up to her throat. And not just symbolic, this costume was a knock-out.

                                                     

This costume design by Walter Plunkett was made for Eve Marie Saint in the film Raintree County in 1957. Plunkett was an excellent illustrator and made all his own sketches early in his career, but by this time at MGM, a sketch artist was producing his sketches. Since the sketch was not only the basis for the dressmaking, but also as a tool to impress the producer, director and star, a great looking sketch was important. Plunkett considered this film a great costume accomplishment, even more so than his designs for Gone With the Wind.

This simple golfing outfit was designed for Doris Day by Irene for the movie Lover Come Back co-starring Rock Hudson. Doris looked smashing and sexy in this simple outfit, used in a scene where she captures Rock Hudson's attention. The great designer Irene was running her own fashion business at this time, but had been the head designer at MGM, and had been a free-lance designer for virtually all the leading actresses in the 1930s, as well as having had her own designer boutique at Bullock's Wilshire in the 30s and early 1940s. Except for at the very beginning of her career, Irene used sketch artists to do her sketches. Among the latter were Bill Thomas and Adele Balkan, both of whom became costume designers themselves, along with Virginia Fisher.

While dozens of costume sketches were produced for each movie under Hollywood's old studio system, it is rare for any but a few (or none at all) to have survived. After they had retired, several of the notable designers had new illustrations done of their better known costumes, as well as copying the costumes themselves, for fashion shows and retrospectives. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Margaret Herrick Library, has a fine collection of original costume sketches.