MOD TO GO-GO

The Mod fashions and lifestyle quickly morphed into Go-Go styles during the fast-paced 1960s. Mod had come to America from the UK, well-dressed but with an emphasis on modern. The starched-world setting of The Mad Men, now again in vogue,  was what the Mods were rebelling against. The Go-Go look was stylish, before the anything-goes styles of the hippies completely deconstructed it.

Mod came with the music of the British invasion, but it was the music and dancing in New York and L.A. where Go-Go fashion flourished. The first Whisky a Gogo was in Paris in 1947, where underground dicotheques began during World War II and spread afterwards. The famed Whisky A Go-Go on the Sunset Strip in L.A. introduced girls (young women) dancing in glass booths - and later suspended cages - to both recorded and live music beginning in 1964. Fast, frenzied, and free characterized Go-Go. Gone were the petticoats and corsets. The now fashionably despised pantyhose were the items of dress that made mini-skirts and hot-pants happen.

Movies were slow to capture the true mood of either Mod or Go-Go. But a few costume designers where at the right place at the right time to capture the style. The costume sketch above and several below were designed by Moss Mabry for Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, directed by Paul Mazursky in 1969.

 

                                                                                     
Natalie Wood played Carol, wife of Bob (Robert Culp) about to "swing" with Ted (Elliott Gould), as his wife Alice, played by Dyan Cannon will with Bob. It was all about the free-wheeling 60s in California, with lots of humor, and a great vehicle for some swinging fashions by Moss Mabry. Mabry designed just the right wardrobe to capture the fresh and frank sexiness of both Natalie Wood and Dyan Cannon.

                                         
A signature style of the Mod look was the well-tailored and trim-fitted suit. Moss Mabry designed this plaid suit with short skirt for Dyan Cannon for the film.

                                                                           

Moss Mabry could design for men or women, having designed James Dean's iconic wardrobe of jeans, T-shirt, and red jacket, as well as the other costumes for Rebel Without a Cause. He also designed Goldie Hawn's wardrobe in Cactus Flower, 1969, and Butterflies Are Free in 1972.  He also had a great flair for show-girl costumes and model's fashions.                                                             

These two models show the unmistakable look of the 1960s. The flare in the pants matched by the flair of the styles.

 While Edith Head had already been designing costumes for over thirty years by the late 60s, she knew how to adapt to the times. The sketch below was designed for one of the dancers with Shirley MacLaine in Sweet Charity,1969, another time-capsule film of the late 60s. Ms. MacLaine plays a singer and dancer in this Bob Fosse film, a great showcase for her talents.

                      
                                                                                                                                                                       

                                                                                

Another looker who danced was Ann-Margret. The sketch below shows one of the many costumes Edith Head designed for her playing an author who lives out her fantasy story lines in The Swinger, 1966.  Miss Head captured the roles well with her costumes, though the movie was one of those studio productions based on a poor script.

                                                                         
Renie Conley was another designer who had started in the 1930s and was still active in the early 1980s. The sketch below, previously used in my post Mod a la Mode, just happens to
have been designed for a scene at the Whisky a Go-Go. Though the production is unknown, it was designed during the late 1960s. Renie had designed Kitty Foyle for Ginger Rogers in 1940, worked on Cleopatra in 1963,  and worked on one of her last film costume designs for Kathleen Turner in Body Heat in 1981.

                                                                          

      Styles of the 1960s come back in vogue every few years, and were even seen last year. And now the late 50s-early 60s look popularized by the Mad Men is back. Whether its 50s or 60s, both periods had great styles and an emphasis on daily fashion that, sadly, has been lacking over most of the last decade.  Maybe it's time to go-go.

For more on Mod, see my March 27, 2010 post, "Mod a-la-Mode." 
 http://www.silverscreenmodiste.com/2010/03/mod-la-mode.html                                                                    

THE COSTUME SKETCHES OF MARY WILLS

The late Oscar-winning costume designer Mary Wills created not only wonderful movie costumes, but exuberant and beautiful costume sketches in the process. That her work is largely forgotten today is unfitting for such a great artist and costume designer, and for someone who made so many  contributions to movie history. Posted here are some of the costume design sketches that show her amazing talent.

                                                                

In 1944, Mary Wills began her long Hollywood career designing Belle of the Yukon. She had been the first woman admitted to the Yale Art and Drama School, where she earned a Master's Degree. She began working for Samuel Goldwyn in 1948, where she designed costumes for the movie Enchantment, starring Teresa Wright and David Niven. Soon she was being referred to as The Fabulous Miss Wills at the Goldwyn Studio. The above sketch is for another film, and shows a smart linen travelling suit .

                                            

Mary Wills won her costume design Oscar for the 1961 film The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm. This was a Cinerama production starring Yvette Mimieux, Russ Tamblyn, Laurence Harvey, Claire Bloom and many others. The costume sketch shown above was created for Yvette Mimieux in the Dancing Princess sequence. Miss Wills had a flair for designing dance and folk costumes, a talent she used later in her career designing for the Shipstad & Johnston Ice Follies. She also designed the costumes for the musical, Carousel, starring Shirley Jones.

                                                                     
          Here is another sketch for a costume worn by Yvette Mimieux in the Brothers Grimm, an Empire style dress from the time period of the film.

                                                             

One of Miss Will's most memorable films was Hans Christian Andersen.  For this film  she designed the costumes for Danny Kaye and the rest of the cast, excepting the ballet costumes. Shown above is a costume design sketch for Danny Kaye in the leading role. Using her artistic talent, Mary Wills was able to add subtle background scenery to many of her sketches, presenting a vignette for the context of the costume.

Since filming took place on a Hollywood sound stage, her colorful and realistic costumes for the market scene in Copenhagen helps bring to life the sights and sounds of the old city. Shown here is a costume design sketch for a flower seller and her daughter. Miss Wills' sketches give the appearance of living characters, as if she had actually painted them seated at an easel in the market square. The film was nominated for a Best Costume Oscar in 1953.

Mary Wills was also a skilled designer of historical costumes for film. The sketch above is for a costume worn by Joan Collins in the role of Beth Throgmorton in the 1955 film The Virgin Queen, starring Bette Davis. The fabric swatches selected for the costume are still attached to the sketch. Mary Wills received a Best Costume design nomination for this film, as did Charles Le Maire who headed costume design at 20th Century-Fox.

                                                                         
And Mary Wills could also design costumes for films that had a darker side, such as the first Cape Fear, and The Diary of Anne Frank. The costume sketch above is for Polly Bergin in
Cape Fear, co-starring Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum. Mary Wills worked on two major films that she didn't get film credit for; Funny Girl and Camelot. In Funny Girl, she designed the spectacular Ziegfeld show-girl Brides costumes and the costumes for Omar Shariff . Her last film work was in The Passover Plot in 1976, for which she also received an Academy Award nomination.

Mary Wills

                                                                    

Before her final retirement to Sedona, Arizona in the mid-1980s, she designed costumes for special productions such as the The New Buffalo Bill Wild West Show and The Nutcracker on Ice. Mary Wills died in 1997. Her work lives on in film, but her name should live on too. She brought a high level of artistic talent and integrity to her creations, breathing life into the costumes she designed. More of her costume sketches can be seen in the slide show  below: