Saturday 10 November 2012

V&A - Hollywood Costumes

This Wednesday I went to the V&A - I went with uni for the Hollywood costumes exhibition, my lecturer for  the module I went for got the uni to pay for our entry, so that was a huge bonus!

Hollywood costumes was so good. They had so many outfits than I expected. The exhibition took over an hour to go though. The first costume I saw was the Green dress Scarlett O'hara wore in Gone with the Wind, played by Vivian Leigh. This film is one of my favourites. I was watching parts of the film the day before I went to the exhibition. I was so excited when I saw it. I was just starring art it. I wish I could have seen the back of the dress better. They even had the hat and everything. The dress looked so nice in person.




It was really great to see all the costumes close up in person. Its amazing how much detail they put into all these dresses, especially when they're only on screen for a few minutes some times.

They had another dress Scarlett O'hara wore. The bright red dress. The colour had looked like it faded slightly, but you could see all the embellishments. I think the description said the embellishments were glass and metal. I assume the metal is encasing the glass.



They had so many outfits, a lot of mens costumes, which I didn't expect. They had Rocky Balboa's boxing outfit from Rocky 5 and Indiana Jones, a lot more that I cant remember.

I really liked how they had descriptions from the costume designers about the outfit and inspirations or ideas. I remember they had the costume Natalie Portman wore as Alice in the film Closer, when she had the red short hair and wore that long denim coat. The designer wrote that she saw this homeless girl and copied the outfit. Its nice to know where their inspiration came from.

I also liked how creative they were with some of the costumes display. Superman's outfit was hanging from the ceiling like it was flying, Spider-mans outfit was crawling on the wall, Catwoman's outfit was high up on this ledge. Best outfit display had to be Uma Thurman's costume in Kill Bill, it was in the position as a flying kick!


They also had Jack and Rose's costumes from Titanic. Their outfits were really far away and they weren't in a good position to see. Maybe its because their outfits aren't as popular as some of the others.

The Addams family outfits were their too! They had Wednesday, Pugsley, and the baby's outfits. It was nice seeing them and noticing how small they were. I was really surprised to all the detail on Morticia's costumes. You don't see all that detail in the films, so it was nice seeing it in person and appreciating it.

I think the outfit I was most looking forward to was Dorothy's, played by Judy Garland in Wizard of Oz. I was a bit upset when I read the description and found out it was all a reconstruction however they did have the real slippers she wore! For being over 80 years old, the colour had faded and they weren't as sparkly but it was nice seeing the shoes she wore. I am a huge fan on Judy Garland, for her being very short I expected the shoes to be quite small but they weren't. They had reconstructed shoes made from the original shoe pattern, they were really bright and sparkly, you could see them from the other side of the room!


Another thing I noticed was the size of the actress and actors. You can never really tell how tall or skinny they are until you see them or the clothes they wear. I was surprised to see how skinny so many of the actresses were.

Overall I really liked the exhibition. I recommend it to anyone! It was really great seeing all the detail to all the costumes.

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