Fashion History

Lily Absinthe Goes to Africa…Part 1

/ Adam Lid / Leave a comment

Out-of-Africa-Gallery-5

With the incredibly warm and humid weather we’ve experiencing lately and for a change of pace, we’re going to take a look at a different sort of film: Sidney Pollack’s Out of Africa. Released in 1986 and starring Meryl Streep, Robert Redford, and Klaus Maria Brandauer, it is based on Karen Blixen’s book of the same title about her life in Kenya from 1913 through 1931. The costumes were designed by Milena Canonero and the she won the Best Costume from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA).

With Kenya as the setting, it’s natural that safari-style clothes styles would be given pride of place and Canonero does not disappoint. With the exception of a few scenes, Streep is pictured wearing outfits that are all based on women’s casual styles that were extant during the late teens and 1920s modified for the tropical/near-tropical climate of East Africa. According Canonero, she tried to keep the clothes of lead characters in neutral colors- khakis, whites, and ivories; in a few scenes Streep does wear some black and navy for Streep. The brighter colors for the Africans.

Below are some of the various outfits:

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The above outfit is a direct descendant of the shirtwaist/skirt combination that was characteristic of the 1890s but now more relaxed and without the corset.

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The coat in this picture appears to be a little more fancy that the other ones with the collar trim and appears to have been made of linen.

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The coat in the above two pictures appears to have been made of linen.

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It’s difficult to tell what fabric this coat is made from- either linen or cotton, most likely cotton along with the matching breeches.

And of course, things would not be complete without a pith helmet. 🙂

What is especially striking from the above pictures are that the colors of her outfits harmonize with the background and she seems to almost blend in with the countryside.

Just for comparison, below are some pictures of the real Karen Blixen (Dinesen):

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Karen Blixen and her brother Thomas Dinesen, c. 1920s.

Karen Blixen and her brother Thomas Dinesen, c. 1920s.

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Karen Blixen and Denys Finch Hat­ton

As can be seen from both the movie wardrobe and original pictures, it is obvious that the style of these garments were practical and harmonized with the local environment. In many respects the styles are almost timeless and have influenced fashion to this day. In fact, around the same time that the movie was released, Banana Republic developed a line of updated “Safari Clothing” that was very popular during the mid to late 1980s.

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From Banana Republic Catalog No. 22, Spring 1985.

From Banana Republic Catalog 22, Spring 1985.

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Banana Republic Catalog 23, Summer 1985.

From Banana Republic Catalog

From Banana Republic Catalog 21, Winter 1984.

The interaction between costume for film and fashion in general has existed since the advent of movies and the influence of Out of Africa is no exception.

In the next post, we will take a look at some more costumes from the movie that are not “safari style”. 🙂

To be continued… 

The Power of Color, Texture, and Light

/ Adam Lid / 1 Comment

Successful garment design is a combination of several elements: design, fit, fabric, texture, and luster (i.e., shine). We here at Lily Absinthe propose to add one more to the above: suitability for a given place and time. The elements (indoor/outdoor) affect the appearance of the garment. Some fabrics were never meant to be viewed in natural light, they were meant to be seen in a ballroom or other indoor venue that is lite with either candle, gas, or electric light.

When one transgresses these boundaries, the end result give a harsh and unnatural result. For example, shiny satins worn in the noonday sun only serve to look harsh and glaring; the end result is a visual effect that  is the equivalent of running one’s nails across a chalkboard. However, this same fabric when shown to its full advantage indoors looks rich and beautiful, if not luxurious.

Below are two examples of different fabrics and their appearance:

Karin_Lilac Dress1The above dress is meant to be seen in natural light. Matte, sheer cotton layers create non-reflective surfaces that absorb sunlight, not reflect it.

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Dana Delany from Tombstone.

In contrast to the first dress, this dress is meant to be seen under artificial light. It is rich and highly reflective, utilizing the available light to its full advantage (note, lighting of the late 19th Century is much more dim than what we are used to today). However, in sunlight it would look like cheap tinfoil.

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Saloon girls from What Have I Done.

Here is an example of when the rule is intentionally broken showing the harshness of the shiney reflective fabrics in the noonday desert sun.

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Meryl Streep from Out of Africa.

Above is another example of color at work. Here the colors of the outfit are matte and remain muted in the harsh sunlight and brilliant foliage of Kenya.

Whether designing for a  production or simply making something for yourself, one must be mindful of the interaction between light and fabric.

A Little Late Night Re-Design Work…

/ Karin McKechnie-Lid / Leave a comment

I’ll be working here in peace for the next two days, creating new, refashioning old, and enjoying the monsoony thunder. This old house really brings out my creativity. <3

Usually, when I have a dress that just doesn’t work out for me, I either put it in the the studio rental collection or sell it. But this dress deserves a second chance: it’s made of three different dyed-to-match pieces of silk. All the flowers and lace are hand embroidered and the suite of lace are all antique originals and I can’t bear to let them go. I didn’t like how I photographed in the dress and I feel that I would better in shorter (evening) sleeves. Because of its intense color (which was the height of fashion in the 1870s with the development of aniline dyes) the dress never photographed well and looked flat even though it’s a three-dimensional object. With digital photography, the color is so intense that it vibrates/moires (i.e. shimmers). In order to give the dress more dimension on film, some other colors need to be introduced into the embroidery along with a few more textures. By doing so, this should reduce the vibrating effect.

Below are pictures of the dress both in color and black and white:

Karin_Fuschia Dress1

Notice in the above picture that the details are blurred- this NOT because of the camera being out of focus or some other malfunction.

Karin_Fuschia Dress3

Karin_Fuschia Dress2

In the above two black and white pictures, note how the details of the dress now stand out. It is my goal to make the dress stand up to film and not vibrate by color balance.

Here are some more “before pictures” taken in our Tombstone studio. The color in these pictures is not true, they are actually much more bright:

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Dress3

Dress4 Dress2

It is my plan to replace the current sleeves with shorter (evening) sleeves so that the emphasis will be more at the shoulder as opposed to the arm. As a note, during the late 19th Century, people would often order two sets of sleeves, the first being a more full set of dinner/reception sleeves and the second being a shorter set for balls. Dresses were expensive and having two sets of sleeves was a practical money-saving measure.

I will update you as I progress with this project.

Lily Absinthe Takes One Last Look At the Movie Tombstone

/ Adam Lid / Leave a comment
OK Corral

A 30-second gunfight that is still written about and discussed.

Well, just when you thought that we had explored this topic to death, once again we’re back! 🙂 In our past posts, we primarily explored the types of female costume seen in the movie and touched a little on the male ones with the aim of deconstructing some of the details. It’s all too easy just to passively watch a film but not really grasp the costumes themselves and in a way, that’s a good thing in that the costumes should no dominate the viewer’s attention. But at the same time, the costuming does help to tell the story.

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“And she walked out of our lives…”

Now we’re going to take a bit of a look at the “story behind the story” and the story behind Tombstone is interesting in that in may respects it was completely contrary to what is typical in a Hollywood production. The two over-arching things that affected costuming decisions were: 1) a tight budget; and 2) it was being made at the same time three other Westerns were being made. Worse, one of those other westerns was Kevin Costner’s Wyatt Earp. One major result was that most of the available rental wardrobe had already been rented out by the other productions (according to one unsubstantiated rumor, Costner deliberately rented all the Western wardrobe he could find just to deny it’s availability for Tombstone.).

The solution? According to the Costume Designer Joe Porros, they pretty much had to fabricate everything from the ground up. As Porros describes it:

That movie was done on a really tight little budget…. Preparation was nasty. I think I had four weeks at the most, and we were building costumes right through the whole thing as I recall. It was really rough. lt was long 16 hour days, six days a week. It was a nightmare. There was Geronimo, Wyatt Earp and another movie going. There were four Westerns going at the same time and I was the last costume designer hired. So it made it really, really tough…We made everything from boots to gloves to everything…the women’s costumes  were made by the Tucson Opera. Company. They made all the dresses for Dana Delany.[1]

In an effort to stay within budget, Porros utilized costume production sources outside of the normal studio system:

Since this was a non-union film and a low budget. l had most of the stuff made in downtown LA [in the garment district]. I had a Filipina shirtmaker who worked out of her house, and she made all the shirts. Everything was being manufactured at all these different places. Nothing was made in a costume house. It kept the cost down, and we couldn’t afford a costume house. We made a couple of thousand pieces of individual wardrobe…we even made several hundred cowboy boots.[2]

Besides the all too common problems of low budgets and short preparation time that plague many movie productions, what is especially interesting is that the production went to outside entities other than the standard Hollywood costume house to get their costumes made. In the end it was a matter of cost but it’s still interesting that Porros went “outside” the standard studio system. That was some 21 years ago and was a harbinger of the increasing decentralization that the film industry has experienced in recent decades facilitated by technology, the changing marketplace, and simple economics.

When Tombstone was released, it was fully expected that it would not do well and especially since it was going up against Costner’s Wyatt Earp. However, against all expectations, Tombstone succeeded and today, some 21 years later, it is still remains a popular film and is considered by many to be the definitive telling of the gunfight at the OK Corral and its aftermath.

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Wyatt & Josephine

[1] Michael F. Blake, Hollywood and the OK Corral: Portrayals of the Gunfight and Wyatt Earp, P. 165.

[2] Ibid., p. 165.