Monday, November 01, 2021
How Dune’s Costume Designers Created the Definitive Sci-Fi Fashion Fantasy
Vogue: Film costume departments regularly bring new worlds to life, but when Jacqueline West and Bob Morgan began work on Dune, they had to create an entire galaxy. Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s seminal science-fiction novel introduces a complex extraterrestrial kingdom where a multitude of planets—each with their own culture and social structure—play a key role in the narrative.
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I often find that the study of the costumes in grand epics like dune or its predecessors, Star Wars, The Lord Of The Rings, or even Avatar can be most educational to a costume designer because the job of the costumes is heightened so much in these projects that they are some of the easiest to study. In the creation of a world other than our own, the costumes must tell the stories that exposition dumps and history cannot, the story of how these people live day to day. Oftentimes that makes for what we see as extremely eccentric costumes, that become incredible storytelling devices. Costumes in every piece of media accomplish these ends, but in the microcosms of stories the practice of “day to day” is raised to often mythological status. That also opens up a greater risk of failure for the designer because more attention is drawn to more extravagant costumes, but the team on Dune handled it perfectly in my opinion and created a really incredible collection of clothing.
I was a bit surprised at how the costuming of Dune did not seem to reference the fashions of the middle east. I have not seen the movie yet, but I have heard that it does not go too deep into the politics and religion as it was outlined in the books. The book was very much an allegory for imperialism in the Middle East: Arrakis = Iraq. Much of the religion in the books was modeled after Islam and the references are well known. While I was surprised, I was not disappointed by the costumes in the slightest. I am somewhat confused at the lack of mention of the original meaning of the text at least as far as explaining why that was not the direction taken, but I have loved the look of everything I have seen so far and I can’t wait to see it in theaters.
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