Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #362426 in Books
• Published on: 2005-08-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 124 pages

Customer Reviews

Designs from the last 10 years
This book shows designs from films that were made in the last ten years. Each designer talks about how they got the idea for the costume and working with the actor who wore it. Some of the costumes were very elaborate while others looked like clothes we would wear everday which are often overlooked as being a costume design. I would of liked to see old as well as new designers in the book though.

aimed at the layperson
I work in costume for theatre and film, and bought this book hoping for insights into the design process in terms of unpicking scripts to give insights to the character and story and communicating that info to the audience. I also expected something about the changes that occur between coming up with an initial design sketch and actually shooting - how you incorporate all the different demands of directors, actors, suppliers that let you down, location changes, etc. I also hoped to learn something about the creation of different costumes; materials, techniques etc.

Now that I have it I see this book doesn't intend to cover this at all, and is a book for a general film buff who has a small interest in costumes, rather than a professional costumer or even a cosplay fan. I was particularly disappointed in the written componant of the book - for example a designer talking about creating a colour 'mood board' to give the actors and directors a sence of the costumes. That doesn't help anyone who works in costume already - it's only news to general public. This isn't a criticism of any of the designers - they have all written clear accessible, interesting text - they are just writing to a different audience than I was anticipating.

So - the layout; each costume has a double page. On the right page is a picture of the original costume sketch, about twice the size of a thumbnail (so still really small) and a larger still or studio photo of the actor wearing the costume in the film. I was disappointed that many of the photos look as if they are supposed to be for a book on actors instead of the clothing - quite a few are waist up and focus on the face. Also on this page is a list of the garments in this particular costume and their fibre componant e.g. "Taupe poly/wool blend suit and green cotton shirt", the name of the actor, the name of the character, and the film for which they were designed.

On the left page is a head shot of the costume designer, their filmography, and a brief (200-300 word) piece about some aspect of the costume design. Sometimes it's about research, sometimes about working with a particular actor, why they chose this colour scheme, where they got the costumes made, a character analysis; each designer talks about something different.

If each designer had talked about ALL of these things it would have been a very informative book. As it is, I enjoyed reading it, I particularly enjoyed the design sketches (wish they were bigger), but still found it unsatisfying. There is a good mix of period and contemporary costumes. This book is the catalogue for an exhibition of these costumes and is arranged alphabetically by designer.

I would recommend it for any students of costume (the introduction by Deborah Nodoolman Landis is very informative for those starting out), but for an experienced designer it won't add much to your knowledge base.

I'd like to read some other reviews of this book - maybe I expected too much and that's why I'm disappointed. There's certainly good snippets of advice all the way through, I just wanted something meatier.