The complexity of costume

Rebel Without a Cause

What’s in a red jacket? A white dress? We explore the hidden meanings in fashion on film

Dorothy’s ruby slippers? Superman’s cape? Marty McFly’s vest? If cinephilia begins with a childhood longing to be the people we see onscreen, costume may be the first aspect we truly obsess over, and the act of dress-up a way to direct our fantasies into reality. But the characters we love have the same instincts, wearing clothes as an expression of love and dependence (the siamese twins who wear identical suits in Twin Falls Idaho), and colours to suggest deeper, unspoken feelings (Richie and Margot’s brown jackets in The Royal Tenenbaums). Costume designers create complex interior worlds through their selection of colours and textures. Below, we explore our favourite examples.

THE SHINING (1980)

The Shining

The outfit?: In Kubrick’s ominous hotel horror, Wendy and Danny repeat a minor colour combination.

Costume designer Milena Canonero (who also worked on A Clockwork Orange and Barry Lyndon) locates an emotional ripple in the perfect symmetry of Stanley Kubrick’s cerebral King adaptation, as Wendy’s early red-and-blue combo (worn as she’s nursing Danny) later finds an echo in the boy’s outfit, subtly reinforcing the bond between mother and son. Room 237 crackpots might want to make note of the fact that red and blue are also meaningful colours for Native American face and warpaint; oh, and bear them in mind when mapping out your deconstruction-of-the-American family theories!

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