Glamour Gowns of Black and White

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Here is the beautiful Liz Taylor in the famous "Cat" dress designed by Helen Rose for Taylor's role in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958). The dress was made of white silk chiffon and showed off Liz's beautiful shoulders. It was a relatively short cocktail dress and the Grecian style draping at the  decolletage  was expertly fitted. It was made in the MGM Wardrobe department by Inez Schroedt, who had been working there since Adrian's time. Helen Rose had so much demand to recreate the dress that she began her own line based on this dress. Needless to say, it was knocked off at cheaper price points. Both Helen Rose and Edith Head designed many of Liz Taylor's gowns for both movie roles and special occasions. They usually capitalized on Liz Taylor's generous cleavage, especially as the censors loosened up a bit (but not completely) in the late 50s and early 60s movies.

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This lovely photo of Grace Kelly is from Rear Window (1954). It's a beautiful gown with a black bodice and a very full  white chiffon skirt with beads designed by Edith Head. Grace wears several stunning gowns, dresses, and even a negligee that would wake the dead, but somehow go unnoticed by Jimmy Stewart. But they're wonderful to look at again and again in the movie.  Miss Head won eight Oscars for costume design, but ironically, none for To Catch a Thief, her most deserving costume ensemble in my opinion. The costumes are not only wonderful designs in themselves, but perfect for the plot and perfect for Grace.

Here is a lovely all-black chiffon evening gown costume sketch designed for Polly Bergin by Edith Head for the movie That's My Boy (1951). This was a Dean Martin Jerry Lewis movie, but even for a comedy, ladies like Polly Bergin were dressed to  be glamorous. And so were the sketches.

All three of the dresses and gowns shown are timelessly in fashion. They all used a silhouette that accented the female body while providing additional visual stimulation from a beautifully worked fabric. What's more, for the movies they helped create character.

WHERE GLAMOUR BEGAN II

The modern meaning of the word glamour began in early 1930s Hollywood, where not only the word but the modern look of sex appeal was created. The ancient Scottish word of bewitchment had been transformed into sexual allure, and the Hollywood costume designers - Adrian, Travis Banton, Irene, and others - had created the look. Fashion had always been beautiful - but sex sold. The designers created styles to emphasize the natural and beautiful figures of the Hollywood star, while designing timeless gowns and glamorous looks that influenced fashions around the world.

In this photo Adrian created the perfect gown for Jean Harlow in 1935, the original "blond bombshell." Not much skin is exposed, but there is no mistaking that  the look of the new sex goddess was born - a look still used today.

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Irene Lentz Gibbons was another great Los Angeles designer. Between her custom label at Bullock's Wilshire, her free-lance film costume designs, and her later job as head designer at MGM, she designed for virtually every major star in Hollywood. Here is one of her gowns for Marlene Dietrich, a regular customer.

Marlene was very particular about her gowns. They needed to make a statement. She relied on either Travis Banton or Irene for such gowns, and later, Jean-Louis.

Here is Marlene Dietrich in a Travis Banton costume designed for the movie Angel in 1937. 

In addition to being meticulous about her gowns, Marlene was fanatic about the proper lighting for her portrait gallery and wardrobe photos.

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This smashing gown was designed by Adrian for Loretta Young in 1933 for the movie Midnight Mary.  It was one of those Adrian gowns that looked very different in front from at the back. The back was in fact backless to just above the waist, with long rows  of fringe that hung from the capelet to her heels.  This is the front of the gown that shows on the cover of my book, Adrian: Silver Screen to Custom Label.  Loretta Young was extremelely photogenic and a much photgraphed clotheshorse. She worked with many of the great designers of Hollywood, including Orry-Kelly, Adrian, Irene, and Travis Banton. When she paired with Tyrone Power in several movies, they looked like the Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt of their day, or George Clooney and Julia Roberts if you prefer.

The eye-popping quality of Hollywood glamour was developed for the needs of the movie business of the day. The look was made timeless so that the styles wouldn't be dated by the time the movies came out. But in so doing the desgners came up with a classic look that is still appealing today. Even more, these became not just bewitching glamour but classic fashion.

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.