Studies in Costume & Performance - Volume 4, Issue 1, 2019

Theatrical design is an under-researched area of Surrealist visual culture. This article examines two examples of Surrealist set and costume design, created by Salvador Dalí and Leonor Fini, respectively, through the concept of the monstrous body. Here, ‘monstrous’ refers to the ambiguous body that defies conventional categories. By using the monstrous body to interpret their designs, this article will yield a deeper insight into these artists engagement with the Surrealist challenge to rational conventions of individualism. It will also evidence their own interests in fluid, metamorphic bodies that blur boundaries of the normative human and the ‘Other’.

The character of the femme fatale and the visual style of film noir are vital elements in our understanding of that genre. Film costumes worn by the femme fatale are crucial, and are defining elements in genre recognition precisely because of their explicit cinematic visualization, rather than functioning as unequivocal signs. This article proposes a methodology for film costume researchers to conduct a pictorial analysis, without necessarily analysing film costume in terms of a meaning-making repertoire adhering to our understanding of film as a ‘language’. In the proposition of a framework for the close textual analysis of film costumes, the methodology is based on the triangulation of a shot-by-shot description, a wardrobe breakdown and an examination of production stills. This triangulation is crucial to understand the complexity of film costumes, which are defined by a wide-ranging set of factors such as: the film industry’s mode of production, the film costume’s relation to the fashion of its time, the body and star image of the actor, the work of the costume designer and his/her department, and the film-specificity. The ways in which a film costume functions in a specific shot will prove to be an important tool to analyse the pictorial characteristics of film noir and the femme fatale. To exemplify to methodology, this article proposes a close reading of an iconic film costume designed for one of the best-known performances of such a character, i.e. the white jumpsuit designed by Edith Head for Barbara Stanwyck in the closing scene of Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (1944).

This contribution is developed from a series of discussions with Simona Rybáková, Czech costume designer and curator of the Extreme Costume exhibition that was presented at the Prague Quadrennial in 2011 (PQ11). Following an overview on the presence of costume at recent editions of the Prague Quadrennial, this text focuses on the Extreme Costume exhibition, which showcased cutting edge costume practice in a full-scale independent display, for the first time shown separately from the PQ11 general performance design exhibition. The discussion provides a critical reflection on the curatorial process for the Extreme Costume exhibition and illuminates the curator’s enquiry and her intentions behind specific choices. It includes a review of the audience’s response and, most importantly, concludes with Rybáková’s insights on her personal ‘emancipation’ from her long-lasting professional role as costume designer to the role of costume curator working with her colleagues’ practice for the purposes of this exhibition. Given the limited documentation available about Extreme Costume, the aim of this contribution is dual: to provide a resource on the scope and reach of this significant event; and to offer materials to costume research for further discussion related to exhibiting costume beyond the context of its original performance.

This visual essay focuses on the perception of fragility through the costume design and making process and subsequent creative interaction with performers, central to the creation of a piece of choreographed contemporary dance. Working with porcelain clay as wearable material, examples of emerging methodologies for researching costume are demonstrated. Through this practice its position as the governing element to the piece is explored as costume becomes the ‘text’ determining the choreography. Can the costume shape the physical and emotional responses, as its resistant, yet fragile form dictates the movement and senses of the body?