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Friday, February 21, 2025
“Costume design is psychological architecture”: Asian Film Archive’s programmer Natalie Khoo on its latest project ‘Styled and Sutured: Fashion on Screen’
vogue.sg: For a long time, the relationship between film and fashion has been a symbiotic one. The making of a film is a collaborative process, with set design, make-up and wardrobe often culminating in their efforts to create an evocative visual story. Designers who are perceived as legendary in the zeitgeist have been known to participate in the making of costumes for the silver screen.
I'm not sure I have ever wanted to see a program so viscerally before. I am beyond obsessed with the way fashion and film interact with and influence one another. The idea that fashion is a narrative force is one that I believe in very strongly. So much context, embellishment, and world building can be told through what is "just" clothing. Not only that, the emotions that can be elicited through the purely artistic side of fashion are endless. Abstract colors and shapes can do just as much for an audience members association with an environment as historically-distinct clothing features. I really like how this article acknowledges how costumes can also define an actors performance- constraining and defining their movements facially and physically. I find costumes that parallel the story told on screen with how they are interacted with in real life to be particularly impressive. Of course, within a reasonable degree- such as clothing with a more physical weight like wool reflecting a characters' dire personality or a carefree character wearing shorter clothing.
I think it’s so cool that this exists for people to read up on and go to. Fashion being influenced and influencing movies isn’t something I have thought about as much as say, technology and movies, sci-fi in particular, but is great that I know about it now. What people wear in movies when relating to what people wear in real life makes a lot of sense, many people I know want to dress like certain movie or tv characters because they liked the fashion of it all. I wasn’t expecting other installations and experiences in this programme, but it makes sense when I think of it, rooms are also an expression of who people are and they are where people typically get ready for the day and everyday people become the designers of their own looks, though as the programme is saying, not without the influence of movies. Another aspect of this article and the aspect of costumes that I love the most is the psychological storytelling that clothes provide, I find it so fascinating that designers know just what to put together to give the right effect.
The symbiosis between film and fashion is one that I am only tangentially aware of - but it is one that is arguably essential to both fields. Styled and Sutured: Fashion on Screen seems like an interesting programme. I am glad it includes earlier films, as it spans from 1929 to 2023. Materiality is such an exciting concept, especially in the context of film - where the camera tends to flatten such compositional elements, and editing can clutter it up. The installation and pop up market aspects of this occurrence seems equally as interesting as the programme itself. The phrase ‘Fashion is both performance and memory-making’ from the article is a powerful one, but I think there’s more to it than just perception. I’d even argue most films where costumes are consciously chosen could be seen as fashion films, whether or not the creators or audience acknowledge it - the clothes that a character wears tells us things about that character, whether or not that was the original intent or that of the filmmakers.
3 comments:
I'm not sure I have ever wanted to see a program so viscerally before. I am beyond obsessed with the way fashion and film interact with and influence one another. The idea that fashion is a narrative force is one that I believe in very strongly. So much context, embellishment, and world building can be told through what is "just" clothing. Not only that, the emotions that can be elicited through the purely artistic side of fashion are endless. Abstract colors and shapes can do just as much for an audience members association with an environment as historically-distinct clothing features. I really like how this article acknowledges how costumes can also define an actors performance- constraining and defining their movements facially and physically. I find costumes that parallel the story told on screen with how they are interacted with in real life to be particularly impressive. Of course, within a reasonable degree- such as clothing with a more physical weight like wool reflecting a characters' dire personality or a carefree character wearing shorter clothing.
I think it’s so cool that this exists for people to read up on and go to. Fashion being influenced and influencing movies isn’t something I have thought about as much as say, technology and movies, sci-fi in particular, but is great that I know about it now. What people wear in movies when relating to what people wear in real life makes a lot of sense, many people I know want to dress like certain movie or tv characters because they liked the fashion of it all. I wasn’t expecting other installations and experiences in this programme, but it makes sense when I think of it, rooms are also an expression of who people are and they are where people typically get ready for the day and everyday people become the designers of their own looks, though as the programme is saying, not without the influence of movies. Another aspect of this article and the aspect of costumes that I love the most is the psychological storytelling that clothes provide, I find it so fascinating that designers know just what to put together to give the right effect.
The symbiosis between film and fashion is one that I am only tangentially aware of - but it is one that is arguably essential to both fields. Styled and Sutured: Fashion on Screen seems like an interesting programme. I am glad it includes earlier films, as it spans from 1929 to 2023. Materiality is such an exciting concept, especially in the context of film - where the camera tends to flatten such compositional elements, and editing can clutter it up. The installation and pop up market aspects of this occurrence seems equally as interesting as the programme itself. The phrase ‘Fashion is both performance and memory-making’ from the article is a powerful one, but I think there’s more to it than just perception. I’d even argue most films where costumes are consciously chosen could be seen as fashion films, whether or not the creators or audience acknowledge it - the clothes that a character wears tells us things about that character, whether or not that was the original intent or that of the filmmakers.
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