The Killing, and the iconic status of Sarah Lund's jumpers.

Previously: A fan's introduction to costume design.

Unpopular opinion time: I don't think that Sarah Lund's jumpers are all that significant.

For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, Sarah Lund is the taciturn protagonist of Danish TV series The Killing, AKA Forbrydelsen. The Killing is a political drama/detective show, the first season taking place over 20 days of a murder investigation in Copenhagen. It was very popular in Denmark, and quickly reached must-watch status in the UK when it aired on the BBC last year. Season 2 just started and I'm watching like a hawk, brain already conditioned into Pavlovian stress attacks whenever I hear the credits music (the Forbrydel-drums). However. While I'm psyched that such a well-made, intelligent, feminist show is so popular, the obsession with Forbrydelsen includes some intense yet slightly bemusing involvement in Lund's jumper choices.

Sarah Lund and the bunch of idiots she has to pretend to tolerate in order to keep her job.

This promo pic gives you a good idea both of Lund's character (confident, serious and aloof), and of the entire cast's attitude towards fashion -- ie, that they don't find it very important.
Everyone in Forbrydelsen is either a workaholic with no spare time whatsoever (the politicians and the detectives), or the grieving family of a murder victim. Not people who spend much time pondering their outfits every morning, in other words. There's a high level of realism throughout all aspects of the show, and in the real world most people just do not care that much about clothes unless they're going to a party or a job interview. They wear things that are comfortable and easily washable and unlikely to get creased if they've got a desk job, and the characters of Forbrydelsen reflect that in their uniformly unremarkable dress-sense. On top of this, the main characters are politicians and cops -- people whose jobs require them to look as normal and un-flashy as possible, albeit for different reasons.

Another world-shattering combo from Sarah Lund, who has more important things to worry about, such as murder.

'For fans of The Killing [...] there's only question bigger than whodunnit: "Why does Sarah Lund always wear that thick patterned jumper? And also, of course, where can I get one from?" ' -- from The Killing: Sarah Lund's jumper explained, in The Guardian.

The actress who plays Lund, Sofie Gråbøl, has commented on the jumpers in several interviews. I don't doubt that thought was put into Lund's costumes, but I get the impression that neither Gråbøl nor the showrunners ever predicted the level of interest that fans would exhibit in her jumper collection. And even if she was aware of how exciting people would find her knitwear choices, I suspect she'd prefer to be discussing her acting and character development. I mean, Lund is a pretty unique character -- a female detective who is, if anything, even more abrupt, antisocial and self-destructive than her male counterparts.

The most important development in season two: Lund's new red jumper.

One of the main reasons why Lund's jumper became so iconic during season 1 is because it appeared so often. At the beginning of the season Lund is supposed to be moving house, meaning most of her clothes are packed away and/or already shipped. Also, she only goes home to eat cold leftovers directly from the pan and take brief 3am naps before someone calls with the next clue, so it's not like she's sorting through her wardrobe for tomorrow's snazzily-knitted Faroese crimefighting outfit. You get the impression she only pauses to shower because greasy hair would be detrimental to the suspect-interview process.

This photo spoiled me for episode 2x04, which I hadn't seen yet. Now I know her original brown jumper will be back!

The jumpers are definitely a characterisation decision, I don't argue with that. Lund is unsettlingly driven and has priorities other than feminine/attractive dressing. She has a boyfriend who clearly has no problem with her wearing the same jumper every day (eat your heart out, Sex And The City neo-feminists). But this isn't some statement of "I'm in a man's world so I'm dressing like this" -- Sarah Lund really does not give a shit. Lund's attitude towards other people's opinions is either to listen to them before ignoring them completely (if they're her professional superior), or to just  ignore them completely from the get-go. She ends most conversations by walking away while the other person is still in mid-sentence, looking slightly shocked that anyone could be that rude. The main message her jumpers convey is that she wants to be warm, and the rest of her clothes are in boxes.

If one googles Sarah Lund, the first two hits are about her jumper. To me, this fixation indicates two things: 1) airing this show in November was a good marketing decision because British people apparently become obsessed with knitwear during the winter months, and 2) audiences have unknowingly been yearning for a female character who dresses like a real person.

Links
Win a The Killing jumper in a Lundalike contest -- Radio Times. (WTF)
Sofie Gråbøl interview regarding season 2 -- Huffington Post.
Sarah Lund's Faroese jumper is the surprise star of The Killing -- The Guardian.
Knit your own Sarah Lund jumper -- Radio Times.

Edited to add, 02/12/2011: Just to highlight the hilariously overblown cult status of the Lundjumper phenomenon, I just discovered that this video exists:

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REVVVEEENNNGE: Nolan Ross costume analysis RETURNS.

I've already written quite extensively about my love of the character Nolan Ross in Revenge. Not only is he the best character in what is already an extremely entertaining show, but his dress sense is eye-bendingly awesome. He has this whole peacockish prepster-satire thing going on, and once you start looking out for it you notice that he appears to be wearing themed outfits in certain scenes. Last week he donned a sleazy-looking brown silk patterned dressing-gown to lounge around in after a sordid, loveless tryst, and I'm almost certain this was on purpose.

At the start of this week's episode (1x09) Nolan is wearing a fairly everyday ensemble: top half normal-looking, bottom half douchey prepster. (Tragically, you can't see the white dress shoes he's wearing to go with the white jeans and white belt. But rest-assured they are very white and shiny.) 

This is his "I'm not going to be hanging around anyone important today so who cares" outfit, the one he wears to do minor household tasks such as purring threats into the ears of people in bars at 11am, and spying on murderous identity-thieving strippers. (I know, right? This show is amazing.) However, later on he's invited to a party full of financial types, there to invest in the probably-corrupt company of his part-time-rentboy fuckbuddy. Aside from the show's protagonist and the aforementioned part-time-rentboy financial advisor, he's the youngest person at the party by about 20 years. So he wears this:

INSPIRED. He's dressed like a 70-year-old banker! But in a bow-tie, because he's at a party! White contrast collar on a striped coloured shirt? PERFECTION. Hyper-masculine Republican power-dressing with an ironic twist, because his main aim is to blackmail his scheming not-boyfriend. Plus matching maroon paisley tie and maroon pocket-square. This is what my brother refers to as a "William Shatner shirt" because it's what William Shatner's aging conservative lawyer character wears in Boston Legal:

IT'S LIKE EXACTLY THE SAME OUTFIT.

NOLAN ROSS IS IN COSTUME AS AN OLD-FASHIONED MILLIONAIRE INVESTOR. Once again, Nolan Ross pairs his Hamptons parody outfit perfectly with the situation. Let's look at it in motion, shall we?

.gif from http://hollowglances.tumblr.com/

DIVINE. That tie really brings out the colour of your dastardly smirk, Nolan.

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Leyendecker and the Arrow Collar Man.

Because I feel this blog has been tragically short on vintage suits so far, here's a post all about Leyendecker and the Arrow Collar Man.

The Arrow Collar Man is a creation of J.C. Leyendecker, a German-American illustrator of magazine covers and advertisements in the 1900s-30s. Leyendecker worked on a variety of illustrations and ad campaigns, but his speciality was these hyper-masculine, square-jawed all-American guys who spent their days smoking, posing in a manly fashion, and playing sports. The Arrow Collar Man is kind of The Man Your Man Could Smell like of the early 20th Century.

1920s Twilight.

Arrow Collar Man didn't really have a personality the way The Man Your Man Could Smell Like does, though. He was more just endlessly handsome and glamourous, which is probably all you need in your shirt adverts in 1920s America. The campaign was incredibly successful, although that's probably less to do with the advert itself and more to do with the fact that the concept of shirts with collars already attached was astonishingly tempting when compared to the prospect starching all your collars separately.

Sherlock Holmes and Captain America (I wish).

Despite running for over 20 years, the Arrow Collar Man never seemed to age, which is particularly impressive since Leyendecker used the same model the entire time. I find them a lot more appealing than today's equivalent suit/fashion ads, to be honest, because using an illustration is an acknowledgement that people can't/don't have to be this perfect-looking. With a modern photo ad, the viewer sees a suit and is supposed to think, "That's what the suit looks like," with the photoshop/airbrush artist hopefully an invisible presence somewhere far away from either the model or the camera lens. But with a painting you have the model at one end, the viewer at the other, and in the middle the artist saying, "Hey guys, I'm here to make everyone look better and we both know that!" Photographs imply authenticity, but the point of advertising isn't authenticity, it's to show the product from its good side.

I think it's safe to assume that at least two of those soldiers are not remotely interested in the nurse.

There's a definite element of homoeroticism in a lot of Leyendecker's illustrations, although I have to wonder how much of it was ever picked up on by the general population circa 1905/1920/etc. Most of the time it's rather coy, like the picture above, although occasionally you get adverts that to the modern eye seem entertainingly obvious:

It's like he was going for "world's most phallic advert" award or something.

I mean, what is THAT? "Join the Navy, where glistening, shirtless men thrust huge missiles into waiting holes"? And there's more:

I'm going to go ahead and assume that Leyendecker never had much experience with the military, because these guys are basically Chippendales. It makes me feel a little bad for the small number of guys who looked at these posters, thought, "Hell, yeah!" and were then sorely disappointed by the realities of military life in the 1930s.

o rly?

But it's not just a "Leyendecker was gay so he drew a bunch of hot men" thing, I don't think, because he was being hired consistently for this work, meaning that not just gay dudes were buying the products he helped advertise. Arguably the Arrow Shirts could have been marketed directly at women buying for their husbands, but Leyendecker's magazine covers and other adverts weren't. To me it indicates that Leyendecker's men (and the men of early 20th ads in general, although to be honest I don't know much about this) aren't just objects of desire, they're meant to be enviable, and to be emulated. Much like women in modern ads.

 It's no secret that practically everything these days is sold using a hot, frequently half-naked woman, because in theory either you're going to associate sex-appeal with the product (straight men) or you're supposed to want to buy the product in order to gain sex-appeal (women). Leyendecker's men aren't the men of modern ads -- they're admirable, but they're also intentionally desirable. They're paragons of gentlemanly style and sportsmanship. They're a far cry from the Lynx/Axe body spray dudes -- probably an unfair comparison, but you get what I mean. All ice-cream ads in 2011 are women orgasming over the sheer gloriousness of ingesting £2.50's-worth of processed frozen chocolate, whereas a Leyendecker ad for ice-cream in 1911 would probably be two hearty chaps at the tennis court holding ice-creams and looking like they're in the middle of a discussion about tie-pins, the German Problem, or stock options.

JUST CHILLAXIN' HERE IN MY GOLFING UNDERWEAR...

Check out this sock ad. First of all: sock ad. Obviously it's charmingly archaic by our standards, especially the snappy slogan ("The most extensively sold make of Men's Half Hose in existence"). This is not the way to advertise socks in 2011. Socks are functional; sock ads in 2011 are functional. Men only get to be sexy if they're driving a new car or using a new shaving product, and then it's the product that's sexy, not the man. But I think we can all agree that the socks are not what makes this image awesome.

Nothing says "Easter" like an 18th century French courtiere and a poodle.

What really cracks me up is when Leyendecker's bosses give him creative control. If you google-image his art you get just as many magazine covers as adverts, and most of those magazine covers are totally impossible to parse. He seems to enjoy historical themes, but not usually for any... relevent reason...

Of course this picture represents Thanksgiving. OF COURSE.

Actually, looking at the Thanksgiving picture above, I can help thinking that 1920s American football uniforms are sort of steampunk. I would so totally wear that! Then again, I'd probably also wear the courtier outfit as well, so long as you removed some of the lace.

I looked at this magazine cover for a good thirty seconds trying to work out what news story it could possibly be supposed to represent. Maybe there was an article about sports and/or rowing in the magazine somewhere? All I know is, most weekly papers no longer feature oiled-up men in short-shorts on the cover.

You know you'd watch this movie in a shot.

Despite the fact that most of Leyendecker's paintings are very obviously posed scenes, I find it much easier to imagine a narrative for them than I can for modern adverts/fashion spreads. Possibly this can be put down to me being a pleb who finds it easier to interpret "art" in a painting rather than a photograph, but I think it's more likely thanks to the expressiveness of the models. Take this current Michael Kors ad:

Scene: personality-free mannequins having fun in a bar while being stunningly attractive yet oddly expressionless. Compared to the next scene: the similarly everyday scenario of people buying clothes (albeit buying clothes from a professional tailor in 1910), but in this case the characters seem to be imbued with 100% more human warmth despite being painted rather than acted out by professional models. I don't know if this picture tells a thousand words, but it certainly has more of a story to it than the Michael Kors ad.

N.B. I think the man on the far right is Giles from Buffy.

Quite apart from the whole female gaze/male gaze thing, I rather love Leyendecker's love of unnecessary costuming. Check out this newspaper cover:

I bookmarked this as "Mr and Mrs Weasley roleplaying as Naughty Maid and Sexy Centurion". I think Leyendecker just wanted an excuse to draw some Roman armour because it was March and it was chilly and he was being paid for this anyway so hey, why not? (Why not?)

To finish, here's one of my favourite Leyendecker illustrations, another (quite early: 1907) Arrow Collar ad. I particularly love this one because of the variety of styles displayed in the lineup -- two different (and very stylish!) businessman looks bookending the group, a woman with a riding crop, a young dandy out for a walk in his flat-cap, and the 1900s equivalent of a prepster. The woman I particularly like, of course. It's highly unlikely that the ad would be marketing to the women-who-wear-suits crowd (not exactly a big market in 1907, although I assume she is in fact wearing some type of riding outfit) but she's still there and looking badass.

The Arrow Collar Man, Virginia Woolf, Dorian Gray, Sebastian Flyte, and Dr John Watson.

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Movie Costumes I Have Loved: Doomsday

photo from here.

At some point I'll go back to writing serious reviews, but having spent the day wandering around Glasgow, my thoughts turned to Doomsday instead. In this film the costumes, like everything else, are nonsense and should be taken with a pinch of critical salt. Doomsday is the film that would happen if someone put every 1980s dystopic/apocalyptic movie in a blender and then set the resulting mish-mash in mid-21st-Century Scotland. This quote from Cheri Priest will hopefully give you an idea of what I'm talking about:

"...it’s got humanity-eating plagues, tribes of cannibal punks, medieval-style fiefs with knights and torture chambers, rubber-wrapped gimps, futuristic soldiers with wacky hardware, cyborg eyeballs, embittered but noble old cops, corrupt and power-mad politicians, tanks, humorous decapitations, and Malcolm McDowell dressed like Henry the Eighth."

Also there's a dance sequence set to Adam Ant. This film came out in 2008, by the way. Not back when Adam Ant was still on the cutting edge of the anachronistic pop-culture zeitgeist. To ease you gently into the logic-free world of Doomsday, here's comparatively subdued screenshot:

Screencap from here. All screencaps are from there or HotFlick.net unless marked otherwise.

Important note: there is no time-travel in this film. Doomsday is set in the real world, albeit one where a plague wiped out most of Scotland and the British government then came up with the tip-top scheme of rebuilding Hadrian's Wall to keep the plague (ie, the remaining survivors) from entering England. Make of that what you will, metaphor-fans. In a characteristic example of Neil Marshall movie subtlety, the new wall looks like this:

The one surprising aspect to this photo is the fact that the wall didn't read "RIP, motherfuckers".

Regarding the earlier picture of our hero (Eden Sinclair, played by Rhona Mitra) facing off against what appears to be a medieval knight on horseback, holding a dragonhide shield... I'll get back to that later. Although probably not the shield. I'm not really clear on what that's supposed to be made of, unless there really was a dragon hanging around somewhere offscreen and they were saving it for a sequel that tragically never got made. This would not surprise me.

Eden is a cop. In a rather unusual move for this type of film, she's dressed very sensibly throughout. Tough boots. Body armour. That sort of thing. It's all black, because she's Serious, and has a Dark Past.

She also has a cyborg eyeball that records video and can be removed to look around corners, because WHY NOT?

.gif from this tumblr.

The plague reappears in London 20 years after the first outbreak, and the prime minister (played by Alexander Siddig, Star Trek fans!) needs someone to go to Scotland and find out if there's a cure. Eden, along with a ragtag bunch of British regional military stereotypes, cross the new Wall to Scotland in search of plague survivors.

Doomsday contains a lot of visual/thematic references to cheesy apocalypse cinema (Escape From New York, etc), and frequently borrows from video games and video game adaptations, none more obvious than the armoured suits Eden and her allies wear when they first reach Scotland:

Pic from here.

Once in Scotland, Eden and her crew of cliches discover that there are two groups of survivors: punk cannibals (in Glasgow), and medievalists (in a castle, of course). See, I told you I'd get back to the dude on the horse! The whole medieval thing... almost makes sense? I mean, castles are very durable, and once you've been cut off from imported fuel and other supplies then a 1000-year-old castle isn't the worst choice when it comes to warm-ish, defensible positions. Except...

Wait, what? WHY ARE YOU DRESSED LIKE IT'S 1300? Living in a castle: maybe. But it's only been 20 years since Scotland got cut off! And the population is tiny! You could probably continue to wear clothes looted from Primark and Topshop for at least another few decades, right? But no. Instead, they've gone to the trouble of weaving medieval-style natural-dyed clothes to match their castle. And adopt MEDIEVAL "FASHIONS". AND KNIGHTS ON HORSEBACK. AND....

The fact that he's wearing fur is probably the only thing about this that makes any sense. WARMTH IS KEY.

In a post-apocalyptic environment, surely your priority is survival, right? Not STAINED-GLASS WINDOWS WITH THE BIOHAZARD SYMBOL ON THEM. And TRAINED FALCONS.

YOU'RE WASTING CANDLES, MALCOLM MCDOWELL!

Malcolm McDowell's character is a prime example of the impracticality of the Evil Overlord mindset. Instead of, you know, trying to find a few generators and getting someone to set up WiFi so the surviving Scots can start a Twitter feed about how shit it is being trapped in a country full of plague corpses, he concentrates on making sure that everyone who lives in his castle is dressed with historical accuracy.

This picture is such a perfect example of the ridiculousness of both Malcolm McDowell's horrendous leadership techniques, and the movie Doomsday in general. You can't tell here, but Eden's about to engage in single combat with an armoured knight wielding a huge mace/morningstar. In the background, everyone is wearing velvet caps and cloaks and there are BIOHAZARD SYMBOL WALL-HANGINGS. What are your priorities Malcolm McDowell? Have you learnt nothing from when your evil plans were scuppered by that other badass post-apocalyptic heroine, Tank Girl, back in 1995?

Note: Tank Girl is awesome, but probably not as brilliant as Doomsday in terms of sheer extravagance.

(N.B. McDowell really is good value, isn't he? He can brandish a cyborg arm while sucking humans dry in Tank Girl, then do interviews like this where he describes his role in Doomsday as "a cross between Lear and MacBeth". MAGNIFICENT. Can you believe that this role was originally intended to be for Sean Connery? Surely he's not menacing enough! And he doesn't have that all-important futuristic megalomaniac experience that McDowell embodies.)

Maroon velvet: the fabric of OPPRESSION.

I actually have a theory about the silly medieval costumes. The castle where these scenes take place is clearly a castle that's been converted into a musem, as evidenced by the fact that there are still "EXIT" signs in doorways here and there (presumably because... they filmed it in a Scottish castle museum...). Maybe there were some re-enactment costumes left over when they moved in? It's probably best to not think about these things too much, and just revel in Doomsday's complete balls-to-the-wall lack of restraint instead.

I guess the armour KIND OF makes sense? And longbows are a very efficient weapon!

Let's take a look at the urban survivors. Surely they can't manage to have a crazier survival strategy than the medieval knight guys, right?

 No.

The people of Glasgow appear to have adopted a kind of goth/urban-tribal look, complete with intricate face-painting (somewhat celtic...?) and hairstyles that look bloody impossible to sleep in. The goth thing I'll allow because Glasgow has a fairly high punk/goth population, and in general I find that the further North you go in Europe, the more goths you find. I'd argue that in Glasgow any tough-yet-unbalance survivors are more likely to be neds, but let's not quibble. People in spiny fetishwear are more visually arresting than people wearing Burberry and Adidas, plus they're an homage to countless classics of the apocalypse genre, such as Mad Max and Escape From New York.

In addition to the whole inexplicable goth/urban-tribal infected-piercings extravaganza, these guys are cannibals. CANNIBALS. Cannibalism? Not a viable survival strategy. Their leader is a punk psycho who gets to ham it up to epic proportions during this party scene, which includes: guys in kilts doing the can-can, pole-dancers, chainsaws, a fire show, and... look, just watch it.

In the great genre movie tradition: He's wearing messy eyeliner, and therefore is probably evil.

I suppose if you were going to try and be smart about it, you could say that Doomsday has some interesting theories about how subcultures might develop in a closed-off society that until recently had all the stylistic influences one expects from first-world media and advertising. Once locked into the pressure-cooker of post-apocalyptic Scotland, the population divides itself into two disparate groups: the snarling, fashion-forward goth savages of the city, and the conservative croft-dwellers of the Highlands. People are so desperate to maintain a sense of belonging that they go to increasingly extreme lengths to prove that they are part of the tribe. Of course, it'd take more than 20 years for this type of society to emerge, but Doomsday isn't really concerned with boring shit like realism. Here's one final example of that beautiful truth: a woman from the start of the film who genuinely seems to have been transported directly from 1975, for no reason other than it seemed like an awesome idea at the time:

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Movie Costumes I Have Loved: True Romance.

I'm taking the "costumes I have loved" theme very literally here, since True Romance is unlikely to make anyone's top ten list of films with cleverest costume design.

I was reminded of this film when I saw Drive this weekend. Drive and True Romance both have this sensitivity/brutality, garishness/darkness dichotomy thing going on, and despite wildly differing in tone, both stories are in similar veins of "petty criminals get in over their heads" + sweet romance. Ryan Gosling's scorpion-pattern jacket is already iconic enough to have inspired fan-made posters, but it comes from the same school of cheap, artificial-fibre colourful Americana as the less famous costumes of True Romance.

True Romance is an early '90s psychos-in-love romantic thriller: Badlands or Bonnie & Clyde by way of Quentin Tarantino. In fact, in true Tarantino referential style, the theme music of True Romance is adapted from Badlands itself.

My main reason for loving the clothes in this movie is Alabama, Patricia Arquette's character. If I saw this woman in real life I would instantly want to congratulate her on her style. Throughout the film she's wearing these hyper-tacky, candy-coloured outfits in varying levels of public inappropriateness (there's a lot of visible bra going on, a look that's approved by Tracey Emin, Betsey Johnson, and not very many other people). The picture above says it all: matching blue bra, plastic earrings, sunglasses, belt, and -- although you can't seen them -- boots. Plus a cow-print skirt. It's marvellous.

When we first see Alabama she's wearing what we could probably interpret as her work clothes as a call-girl, if we didn't later learn that she really does dress like that all the time.

Red earrings, red lipstick, red velvet dress, and leopard-print coat. Leopard-print bra that's totally visible past the halter-neck of the dress, in accordance with the "if you're wearing awesome underwear then people had better be able to see it" rule. Apparently Tony Scott originally wanted Drew Barrymore for the role, which indicates to me that they already had a fairly specific physical "type" in mind for Alabama, a kind of curvaceousness that isn't very visible in Hollywood, especially at the tail end of the gym-obsessed '80s beauty standard. As with any truly character-based costume design, a lot of Alabama's sartorial success is down to the fact that the clothes are perfect for her body type. Alabama's taste is garish to the point of eccentricity, which on a tall, skinny actress would have looked like some kind of ironic fashion magazine photoshoot and therefore not fit the character at all.

Clarence is so grungey.

Clarence (Christian Slater), on the other hand, is kind of a slob. A '90s slob wearing multiple shirts and a thrift-store jacket. I guess this is actually a pretty good illustration of what "cheap" looks like from opposite sides of the gender divide.

From the titles sequence onwards the film makes it pretty obvious how cold and miserable Detroit is for Alabama and Clarence, with Alabama often being the only piece of colour onscreen in the earlier scenes (aside from Clarence's awesome Elvis-pink Cadillac). Once we get to L.A. Aalabama gets way more warm-weather, buying clothes and sunglasses at rest-stop shops on the way. I loved this because in a lot of films when a character either becomes "free" or receives a financial windfall, there'll be a montage of them spending a bunch of money and/or getting some kind of makeover, Pretty Woman style. But Alabama doesn't start dressing any classier, and neither her nor Clarence seem to be changed by their experiences. Until they meet each other they both seem to be loners and fairly oddball characters -- Alabama a call-girl who's just moved to Detroit, and Clarence a comicbook store shop assistant who spends his birthday watching movies by himself -- but both also seem to have a lot of integrity towards their own values and habits. This actually reminded me quite a bit of Badlands, of Sissy Spacek's character bringing her schoolbooks with her even though she was going on the run with a mass-murderer.

You get the impression that Alabama really isn't as immature as her girlish persona and plastic-toy-coloured wardrobe suggests. At first she seems like a bit of a "hooker with a heart of gold" cliché, but she's also got this ongoing amoral/Wild West justice element to her personality, indicating to me that she's really not as naive as she appears.

Before he meets Alabama, Clarence tries to pick up this girl in a bar who, on paper, looks very similar to Alabama:

Unfortunately the light isn't too good in this screencap, but she's got the same bleach-blonde hair, a fur coat, bright makeup and enormous tacky earrings. In fact, she looks a lot like Drew Barrymore, Tony Scott's original choice for the role of Alabama herself. But unlike Alabama, who has this unselfconscious exuberence to her expressions and actions that mirrors the way she looks and makes it charming and eyecatching, this woman gives the impression of being a lot less happy and adventurous. She's drinking by herself in a dingey sports bar, and society tells us that that smacks of desperation. She's Alabama in a couple of years, maybe, if Alabama had never met Clarence.

This shirt is fantastic. Where do you even FIND something like that? It's perfect for her -- a combination of cutesy patterns, fragility and sluttiness. Plus the pink leopard-print leggings. She's rarely seen without some kind of fake animal skin on her body, is Alabama Worley. Either that, or polka-dots. If I were to describe her style in one word, it'd probably be "bimbo". The blonde, perky girl is a staple of American pop-culture but usually she's either an idiot or a bitch, Mean Girls style. This makes me appreciate the few characters like Alabama, Buffy or Legally Blonde's Elle Woods, who turn those stereotypes around by proving that one personality trait doesn't necessary predict another.

It's nothing more than laziness to create a character merely by using a couple of quick visual cues -- a problem far more dangerously illustrated by the fact that most American/Canadian actors of middle-Eastern descent can currently have a lively TV career playing nothing but terrorists. By expected TV/movie logic, if you took someone who looks like Alabama and put her in a comedy she'd most likely end up being a one-dimensional caricature. But the fact that she's in a crime thriller that takes place -- more or less -- in the grim real world, her over-the-top appearance actually makes viewers pay more attention to her character rather than sidelining her as a bimbo, because it seems inconceivable that anyone could be as cartoonish as she looks. And they'd be right.

She's wearing Clarence's sunglasses! ~~True Romance!!

Every Halloween you see people dressed as Uma Thurman's character in Pulp Fiction, mostly because it's an easy costume to make (black wig + white shirt and fake blood) and it's easily recogniseable for that all-important OMG I TOTALLY LOVE THAT MOVIE non-conversation at parties. As Tarantino's first big film (if that, because while it's his script he didn't direct it), True Romance is kind of a precursor to Pulp Fiction and his other more famous movies. Although I have more affection for True Romance I do think that Pulp Fiction is the better film, but in my opinion Alabama is a far more interesting character than Uma in Pulp Fiction, as well as (and yes, critics, I know this isn't very "important") far better dressed. I'd love to see an Alabama Worley or two knocking around next Halloween -- I'd dress as her myself, if I didn't lack almost every physical attribute necessary to make these outfits look good.

For her happy ending at the beach, Alabama's style is still her own but a lot more relaxed. She's still got this very un-1990s rockabilly femme vibe that we see in the first outfit (the halter-neck dress _ lipstick) though, I think.

Gary Oldman is in this movie. I state this simply because often when one points this fact out to people who have already seen the film, their minds are blown. Why? Because he plays Drexl, Alabama's horrifying pimp who thinks he's black because he's 1/4th Cherokee. The way he plays Drexl makes it pretty difficult for the viewer's brain to make the connection to "white British character actor".

In case anyone needs a second to wallow in thoughts of Gary Oldman's ridiculous versatility as an actor, think about Harry Potter. Then think about the Fifth Element. Then check out my post on his most recent film, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

"I know I'm pretty, but I ain't as pretty as a pair of titties." -- Sirius Black.

Maybe part of the reason why Alabama wears so much leopard print in the first scene is because her pimp likes it. You can't see it all here, but he's wearing a floor-length leopard-print robe in this picture. With black satin lapels. And nothing under it apart from boxers. You know, Gary Oldman made his own dreadlocks for this movie! (Wow, Gary. I WOULD NOT BE SURPRISED IF HE ALREADY HAD THE ROBE AND HAT IN HIS WARDROBE. The teeth were his idea as well.)

I'm posting this group shot because I love the way these characters, like many walk-on roles in Tarantino films, are all immediately recognisable stereotypes. All three are criminals, but what you end up with is: Africab-American guy in sweats and a bunch of gold jewellary, Drexl the druggie pimp who wants to be black, and Samuel L. Jackson as a straight-up 1970s gangster who wouldn't look out of place in an episode of Starsky & Hutch. Mustard-coloured rollneck sweater? Brown leather jacket? Scarf? Hat? Maroon sunglasses? Awesome. And in the background we can see the bottom half of Drexl's "muscle", because everyone who's ever experienced any Western fiction from the past 500 years knows that the muscle has no identity or personality of his own, and is usually a guy who stands in the background with his face obscured while other people get the dialogue.

At the other end of the criminal-stereotype spectrum we have Christopher Walken's character, who is delightfully Christopher Walkenish and delivers one of the most recognisably Tarantino-esque scenes in entire film. He's a Sicilian mobster, in case you couldn't deduce that from the fact that he looks like the ultimate #1 Sicilian mobster.

You handsome devil. Literally.

He knows how to accessorise. And I'm not just talking about the three silent goons paid to stand behind him and laugh at his threats/jokes while looking dapper yet menacing.

This guy (Elliot Blitzer) is a brilliant example of character-costuming. The awful cashmere-sweater-over-shoulders/fwoofy '80s hair prepster aesthetic gives off such an instantaneous "I'm a douchebag" vibe that you already know which way his character is going to go before he opens his mouth. In this scene he and Clarence clearly scorn one another, although Elliot is more obvious about it -- Clarence knowing that Elliot is a snivelling middleman, and Elliot making assumptions about Clarence based on the fact that he's wearing dollar-store sunglasses and is a complete Hollywood outsider.

So, are the costumes of True Romance life-changingly brilliant? Probably not. But they're real. They work incredibly well in context. And more importantly, some of the characters live up to expectations while others break free of the assumptions people make based on appearance, just like in real life. (But let's not front -- this post was mainly just a love song to Patricia Arquette's cupcake/call-girl visible-bra outfits. LIVE LONG AND PROSPER, GOLD SUNGLASSES OF ~TRUE LOVE.)

(.gif via Tumblr) (Badass attitude via Patricia Arquette.)

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