THE WOMAN WITH THE WHIP

Steffie Nelson, Special to The Times • December 16, 2007

She put the bullwhip in Indiana Jones' hand, and the dark suits and shades on the Blues Brothers. She sent a zillion leather manufacturers into overdrive, knocking off the zippered red jacket worn by Michael Jackson in the "Thriller" video.

Now, Deborah Nadoolman Landis, an Academy Award-nominated costume designer and president of the Costume Designers Guild, is paying tribute to her craft with "Dressed: A Century of Hollywood Costume Design." With a forward by Anjelica Huston and more than 800 archival photographs, "Dressed" is one of the definitive books on the subject. (Vanity Fair's editor Graydon Carter gave out 500 signed copies as his holiday gift this year).

We talked shop with Landis -- a longtime Angeleno who's married to director John Landis -- while she was in New York for a "fancy schmancy" appearance at "Timeless," the fashion conference by Initiatives in Art and Culture.

"When you work on something your whole life and you have a moment," she said, "it's nice to be the bride instead of the bridesmaid."

Naturally, she was planning to wear black.

"Dressed" covers the history of Hollywood costume design, from Paul Poiret costuming Sarah Bernhardt in 1912 to "Little Miss Sunshine" last year.

I started collecting a database about 10 years ago. If Bette Davis said she wore a feather in her hat in 1936, I found it. But I always say the book is really not about the clothes, because "costume design" summons spectacle, Vegas and Halloween. That's not what we do. We're providing a conduit for the actors. A lot of images that I started to collect were images that people were familiar with, but now you have the stories that illuminate the costumes in a completely new way.

I was really saddened to read about the liquidation of so many amazing costume archives in the '60s and '70s. There's Western Costume, and there are a few in London and in Rome, but Paramount or 20th Century Fox, they used to be treasure houses! . . . Warner Bros. has about the best archives, and when I was a young designer and I started working there, many of the costumes from "My Fair Lady" were still there.

I remember trying on all the hats -- can you imagine? Now, when someone like Colleen Atwood is designing "Sweeney Todd," she has to create her own costume shop.

There are so many great stories -- how Harrison Ford was supposed to wear a fedora in "Blade Runner," but came on set wearing his Indiana Jones hat so Ridley Scott gave him a crew cut instead. What are some of your other favorite flash-of-inspiration moments?

I love Penny Rose's stories about working with Johnny Depp on "Pirates [of the Caribbean]," because she really didn't know what the approach should be. And when he first saw her he said, it's Keith Richards. And then she did the same thing I had to do with Harrison: She brought down a million tri-corner hats, and they played dress up. It's just like being in a fitting room at Loehmann's.

Do you think fashion design and costume design are fusing somewhat today, with the emphasis on celebrity styling and product placement?

They are not fusing; they can't fuse. Fashion designers really do have to sell clothes. That's not to say that great couture doesn't tell a story or that I don't bend before their great work; I love fashion, I adore it, but they don't do what we do. Nobody knows our name, and everybody has to know their name. It really is all about Marc Jacobs.

For us, it really is all about Martin Scorsese or Wes Anderson.

Yet costume design has created some major fashion trends, such as Uma Thurman's look in "Pulp Fiction" or Faye Dunaway's in "Bonnie and Clyde."

It's true, but it's never the intent, because we would always fail. And if you can think of a movie that was a total flop that influenced a fashion trend, I want to know about it. Usually it's something that captures the public's imagination. It's the easiest thing to do, because you can't buy the sets. If you fell in love with it, you can wear a beret, you can take it home with you.

Can you remember the first time that a costume or film had you spellbound?

What movie didn't keep me spellbound? I grew up in New York City and I watched "Million Dollar Movie" on Channel 9 every night of my life.

I love the suspension of disbelief; I want to sit in the dark and be in the movie. How many times have I seen "Gone With the Wind," or "The Women"? I loved all the Adrian movies. Can you believe Adrian designed all those Garbo pictures, all those Crawford pictures and "The Wizard of Oz"? The talent was so unbelievable. And the talent is unbelievable today too. If someone asked me when the golden age of costume design is, I would have to say now.

Givenchy said Audrey Hepburn enveloped him in a radiance he never could have hoped for. Can you think of other synergies like this, where the designer and the actress create an entire iconography?

I would say Marilyn Monroe and William Travilla. He designed all her costumes. "The Seven Year Itch" dress where she's standing over the grate, that's one of the most iconic costumes in history.

But there's an important point to be made here: "In Breakfast at Tiffany's," it really is style over substance. Audrey doesn't remotely look like a call girl. It's a fantasy; she overwhelmed that role.

Deborah Nadoolman Landis knows the right clothes to wear

Samantha Campos • The Desert Sun • December 11, 2007

Although Deborah Nadoolman Landis had a conventional middle-class upbringing in Manhattan, she believes she was born a costume designer.

"When I read books, when I did history homework," she said, "the people in the stories came alive."

In high school, she tutored history. Then she went to Goddard College in Vermont, where she majored in theater. One day, as a senior, she sat in the school cafeteria with a couple of people from the theater department.

"I just said, 'I'm a costume designer!'" said Nadoolman Landis. "And they said, 'Yes, you are.'"

She went home and half-heartedly looked for a job in a costume house. But, she admitted, when you grow up in Manhattan, it's sometimes good to escape it.

So she headed west to graduate school for costume design at UCLA and through a mutal friend, formed an acquaintance with John Landis, who she later married. At the same time, she was learning about patterns and draping while attending night school at L.A. Trade Tech, which provided professional training for the garment industry.

Shortly before graduating from UCLA with her MFA in costume design, she was offered a job at NBC Studios in Burbank.

"It was 1975, the heyday of Captain 'n Tennille," she said. "I was hired as a stock girl, at the bottom of the ladder. But I was in variety show heaven, sewing beads on dresses."

A short while later, Nadoolman Landis landed her first film gig designing for the parody sketch montage and cult hit, "Kentucky Fried Movie" (1977), directed by John Landis.

And her career took off after that.

"I've designed for cultural icons: John Belushi with his 'College' shirt in 'Animal House' (1978), then 'The Blues Brothers' (1980) - it seems there's always somebody doing that for Halloween. Then Indiana Jones ("Raiders of the Lost Ark," 1981). I mean, how lucky did I get?"

Nadoolman Landis is proud of everything she's done, although she admits being most challenged by "Coming to America" (1988), an Eddie Murphy comedy for which she was nominated for an Academy Award.

"I'm thrilled with what I've done," she said. "And I feel secure to go forward as a resident historian."

As an authority in her field, Nadoolman Landis has written and edited a number of books, including her most recent release, "Dressed: A Century of Hollywood Costume Design." She also plans to write more.

"I intend to fill the shelf," she said. "Our field is given short shrift in design literature. I'm in a good position to take down the words of my colleagues."

In 2012, she'll be curating a costume design exhibit at the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The exhibition will then travel to various parts of the globe.

Nadoolman Landis also hopes to clear up a common misconception people have in blurring the lines between fashion and costume design.

"There is no fashion in film," Nadoolman Landis said. "Everything is in a narrative context, in a compositional context. It all comes down to storytelling. It has to be about the character, always. All those costumes had a concept, trying solving this character or compositional dilemma."

She believes the golden age of costume design is right now. "It's never been more exciting," she said.

Creating drag

A new history of Hollywood costume design

by Tavo Amador

01/03/2008

Actors have long known that the right costume makes a huge difference in the effectiveness of a performance. This is especially true in movies, because the impact of a character's appearance is enhanced by the sheer size of the screen image. Dressed: A Century of Hollywood Costume Design (Collins Design, $75) by Deborah Nadoolman Landis is a lavishly illustrated history of an art that, surprisingly, wasn't recognized with an Oscar category until 1948, two decades after the establishment of the Academy Awards.

This coffee-table book is arranged chronologically. The abundant and extraordinary photographs tell the story, but Landis increases their effectiveness by quoting from actors, actresses, designers, directors, and others to explain much that might not be apparent to viewers. Her introductory essays for each decade are exceptionally informative.

In dressing performers, the designers had many objectives: reveal something about the character; provide a tool that helps the actor interpret the role; and for stars, generally make them look as attractive as possible, enhancing strong points, minimizing flaws. Additional challenges were using fabrics that photographed in the desired way, that "flowed" properly, and that were right for the period in which the movie was set. The advent of sound added more complications, because costumes usually had to remain silent when actors moved. Designing for contemporary stories posed one more problem: films are often shot a year before they are released, so creating costumes that are too voguish risks their looking dated when the picture opens.

As Landis points out, these goals help explain why noted couturiers like Erte and Coco Chanel failed when they designed for movies. They created ensembles that women would wear in real life, but looked dull on screen. Effective costume design required exaggeration that would appear over-the-top in person.

During the classic era, the major studios had huge wardrobe departments filled with a dazzling collection of fabrics, feathers, beads, lace, sequins, and every other conceivable item needed for their work. Hundreds of seamstresses, cutters, and fitters were on payroll. Most of the great designers of the period: Adrian at MGM, Orry-Kelly at Warners, Walter Plunkett at RKO, and Travis Banton of Paramount, were gay.

Banton hired the inexperienced Edith Head, who would become the most honored designer in film history, often taking credit for the work of others. The profession was so dominated by gay men that Head encouraged people to think she was a lesbian because she thought it would help her career. While Head may not have been the most original costumer, she had another, very important quality, summarized by Elizabeth Taylor. "It was her method of working that was so phenomenal. She got 'inside' the characters as much as the actors and directors did. She would find little personality quirks for each different individual, like a favorite scarf, or pockets in odd places, sort of built-in props for each role."

Because women have been judged by their appearance far more than men, and because leading ladies were expected to be beautiful and sexy on the screen, far more attention was paid to costuming them than men. Studios soon realized that costume design could become a huge marketing tool. Over 200,000 copies of Adrian's white ruffled organza gown worn by Joan Crawford in Letty Lytton (1932) were made, still a record. Helen Rose's wedding dress for Taylor in Father of the Bride (50), Head's evening gown for Taylor in A Place in the Sun (51), and Givenchy's party dress for Audrey Hepburn's Sabrina (54) were also widely reproduced. On the other hand, when Clark Gable revealed he wore no undershirt in It Happened One Night (34), sales of that garment dropped dramatically, but recovered after Marlon Brando filled it out so magnificently in A Streetcar Named Desire (51). Brando, James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause (55) and Paul Newman in Hud (63) made denim pants a standard for young men.

Even the most talented and serious artists pay attention to clothes. "I'm a notorious pain-in-the-butt for any costume designer. For me, clothes are a kind of character," says Meryl Streep. Bette Davis also understood the importance of costume. About her character the Empress Carlotta in Juarez (39), she said, "To point up Carlotta's growing insanity, Orry-Kelly used visual psychology. He created a white dress for her first scene, and as the picture progressed, the color of the gowns changed from white to gray. Finally, when she's completely mad, she is seen in black." The photographs show how Streep, Glenn Close, Angelica Huston (who provides a thoughtful introduction), among so many, have transformed themselves over the years by wearing outfits that perfectly suited the characters they were playing.

Many of the quotes are nearly as memorable as the images. "Ah like gowns that are tight enough to show I'm a woman and loose enough to show I'm a lady," proclaimed Mae West. Hindsight also reveals some astonishing assessments. "One thing's for sure: now when I look at Funny Girl, I think I was gorgeous. I was too beautiful to play Fanny Brice," insists Barbra Streisand, which makes designer Irene Sharaff's achievements in that film even more impressive.

Landis, who received an Oscar nomination for her costumes for Coming to America (88), is both a practitioner and admirer of the art. As a result, readers of Dressed will find their pleasure in watching movies enhanced enormously.