The costumes of Stoker: A vampire movie without the vampires.

I've been watching a lot of Hannibal recently, and I've come to realise that Stoker could be the origin story for a female analogue to Hannibal Lecter. While there are plenty of psychotic male antiheroes out there, India Stoker is a rare breed: an ambiguously amoral female character who isn't depicted as a bitch, a slut, or a straight-up villain. Like Hannibal, Stoker is a vampire story without the vampires.

Stoker GIFs from here.

Stoker begins with the kind of premise that I generally find depressing: a mother/daughter love triangle, with the mother envying her daughter's youth. In this case it's Evelyn Stoker competing with her daughter India, who in true cliche spirit is "on the cusp of womanhood". Following the death of India's father Richard, long-lost uncle Charlie shows up at the funeral. Exploiting Evelyn's loneliness and India's sulky passivity, he moves into the Stokers' huge country house where he begins seduce both mother and daughter -- in very different ways.

Until we see her go to school, India's age isn't immediately clear. Mia Wasikowska's clean-faced appearance allows her to seem anywhere from mid-teens to late twenties, and India's living situation fails to provide many clues: one can easily imagine her and Evelyn growing old together in the Stoker house, Grey Gardens style. Her costumes are consciously frumpy and virginal: loose-fitting, Alice In Wonderland pinafore dresses and the flat-heeled saddle shoes that take on such important meaning later on in the film.

Clothes On Film has a great post about those shoes as a symbol of Charlie's obsessive desire to control India. He sends her a new pair every year, and thinking they were a gift from her beloved father, they're the only shoes India ever wears. In one scene she lies in bed, surrounded by seventeen years' worth of shoeboxes, and it's never quite clear whether she feels betrayed or intrigued when she finally discovers that they came from Charlie all along. India's shoes may also be a reference to Audrey Horne in Twin Peaks, whose transition from black-and-white saddle shoes to red high heels symbolises her journey from schoolgirl to seductive adult woman.
A lot of thought went into the costumes of Stoker. India is a Wednesday Addams figure, dressing like a child from another era while her mother wears a series of vampy, feminine designer outfits. One of my favourite scenes is when we finally see India leave the grounds of the Stoker house and go to highschool. Until then the film seems like it exists in an arthouse cinema bubble of stylised costumes and mannered colour palettes, but in fact it's only the Stokers who live there. As soon as India arrives at school, we realise that the movie is taking place in the "real" world after all, as the stubbornly bizarre (and now by comparison, utterly bizarre-looking) India goes to class alongside stereotypical 21st century jocks and teen girls.
Charlie's appearance is particularly disturbing because of its Stepford Husbandish attention to conventional detail. All of his clothes are a parody of preppy, all-American style, to the extent that subconsciously, you just know that it's a costume rather than being his "real" appearance. A wolf in WASP's clothing -- or a vampire in disguise. This feeling is exacerbated by the overt hints that despite his charm, he doesn't fit in with normal society -- for example, arriving at his brother's funeral without mourning clothes or even a black tie. Plus, because Charlie is meant to be an object of both fear (India) and desire (Evelyn), Matthew Goode is filmed in a way that mesmerisingly combines "horror movie monster" with "look at this hottie".
One of the reasons why I wrote this review (so long after the movie came out, that is) is the number of questions I've received about Stoker's costumes, particularly the colour-scheme. Charlie's yellow v-neck sweater is a far less noticeable costuming detail than India's shoes or her mother's luxurious formalwear, but it's still ripe for analysis. Charlie is an intriguing combination of two movie psycho stereotypes: charming, virile killers (Hannibal Lecter) and childish or sexually ambiguous weirdos (Norman Bates). As he charms Evelyn and lurks vampirically over India while she plays the piano, we can only interpret him as being in the first category. But as the film progresses, we learn that he also has a great deal in common with the less glamourous breed of onscreen serial killers -- the ones who sleep with a body-pillow of their mother, or collect creepy china dolls.
Charlie's monstrous nature is rooted in his childhood, and once we see the flashback scenes between him and Richard, it's easy to see him as being a partly childlike figure beneath that veneer of seductive American charm. The yellow sweater fits in with this characterisation: the colour of baby blankets, fluffy ducklings, or the kind of pastel shade associated with the implicitly queer villains of media from the mid-20th century. And as this post points out, the recurring colours of red and yellow are a noticeable theme in Stoker. From Charlie's yellow umbrella to India's bloodstained yellow pencil, both colours are in the foreground throughout.
In true vampire movies, the virginal girl's transformation into a bloodthirsty monster is usually signalled by a sudden fondness for corsets and sultry makeup -- a link to the vampire's metaphorical role as an experienced older man who inspires her sexual awakening. Stoker subverts this trope, with Charlie entering into a murderous pact with India before trying to seal the deal with a pair of crocodile skin stiletto heels. In his mind, the shoes are a symbol of him finally bringing India into the fold as his adult lover/fellow "vampire", but India rejects this in favour of going her own way. Rather than transforming into the sexy, aggressively stylish lady those crocodile heels represent, she ends up putting on her mother's blouse, her father's belt, and the shoes as an afterthought. A fitting finale, considering the fact that her style and personality are both a product of the incestuous nature of her family.
Related: Movie costumes I have loved: Hanna.

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Star Trek Into Darkness: Too many dicks on the Enterprise.

[From my Star Trek Into Darkness article at The Daily Dot.]

In 2009’s Star Trek, JJ Abrams successfully made the effort to appeal to new viewers as well as dyed-in-the-wool Trekkies. This time round, he seems to be going further afield— and alienating the original fanbase entirely.

The publicity for Into Darkness has been solidly high school: Don’t worry—it may be Star Trek, but it’s not for nerds anymore! In an interview with Jon Stewart this week, Abrams made it very clear that he’d never liked the show as a kid, because it was “too philosophical.” “I stopped listening when you said you didn’t like Star Trek,” Stewart joked. “I saw your mouth moving, so I assume you apologized.”

It’s not actually necessary for a director to be a lifelong fan if they want to make a successful adaptation. In fact, JJ Abrams’ first Star Trek movie was proof of that. But it’s another thing for an adaption to leave most of the original show’s values in the dust, which is what Into Darkness seems to be doing. The dialogue is snappy, the action sequences are fun, and the characters seem real enough, but the heart and the brain are now gone.

In 1966, Star Trek broke new ground with its international crew of hopeful explorers, scientists, and adventurers. True, the show was full of heavy-handed Cold War metaphors and casual 1960s misogyny, but its central messages were obvious: Racism is bad. Give peace a chance. That kind of thing. Men and women, Russians and Americans, aliens and humans: all could work together on a more-or-less equal footing. For many viewers, Nichelle Nichols (Lieutenant Uhura) was the first woman of color they’d seen playing anything other than a maid. Star Trek was pushing the envelope.

In 2013, not so much. [READ MORE]

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Interview with Michael Kaplan, costume designer of "Star Trek" (2009) and "Star Trek Into Darkness".

I interviewed the Star Trek Into Darkness costume designer for Wired.com! You can read it here.

Since Star Trek first made its way to the big screen, its costume design has veered away from the classic color-coded uniforms in favor of experiments with red double-breasted uniforms and unfortunate flesh-colored jumpsuits. But for the 2009 J.J Abrams Star Trek reboot and its recently released sequel, Into Darkness, costume designer Michael Kaplan helped move the sartorial stylings of the Enterprise crew forwards by looking backwards–at the trusty old red, blue, and gold. It’s a comfortingly familiar detail amongst Abrams’ trademark lens flare and glowing spaceship interiors: a conscious chromatic nod to the vintage style of the original costumes.

“I wanted the film based in the ‘60s,” Kaplan told Wired. “Not literally the ‘60s, but I wanted my thinking to be grounded in the concept of the original Star Trek, almost like an homage…. I had a lot of books in my library that I’d consult: [André] Courrèges [inventor of the mini-skirt], designers like that. To keep things rooted in that, even if when you look at the movie, you don’t say, ‘Hey, this is the early 1960s.’" [READ MORE]

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The evolution of the Star Trek uniform.

Just in time for the new Star Trek movie, I wrote this article for Empire Online! It follows the original series Starfleet uniform from the 1960s to the present day -- but don't worry, there aren't any spoilers for Into Darkness. You can expect a post about that sometime next week, after the US release date. :)

Even Star Trek’s most devoted fans wouldn’t dare claim that the original series was a high-budget operation. In among the cardboard sets, guest stars had to wear a selection of costumes that ran the gamut from the baffling (an evil baby in a silver lamé toga; girls in hot-pink fur bikinis) to the plain ugly. In one early episode, an entire alien species is kitted out in a vaguely familiar fabric that one later realises is also used for all the bedspreads on-board the Enterprise.

But in the original series Starfleet uniform, Star Trek struck costuming gold. [READ MORE]

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How I learned to stop hating and love GOOP.

[I've been pretty busy recently, but we should be back to regular HelloTailor updates in a couple of weeks! :) In the meantime, have this article I wrote about Gwyneth Paltrow's beauteously delusional millionaire lifestyle website, GOOP.]

If the experts at People magazine are to be trusted, then Gwyneth Paltrow is currently the most beautiful woman in the world. Happily, this means that beauty now comes with a comprehensive instruction manual. Thanks to her lifestyle newsletter, GOOP, it’s possible for us mere mortals to follow Gwyneth’s own advice on how to be exactly like her—that is, perfect.

 According to its website, GOOP (cheerily named after Paltrow’s initials) is “a digital media and e-commerce company.” Its free weekly newsletter includes style tips, recipes, vacation recommendations, and miscellaneous words of wisdom from Paltrow’s rich and famous friends. The writing style is particularly intriguing—primarily first-person Paltrow, with occasional additions from a mysterious editorial “we” whenever Gwyneth wants to interview herself.

GOOP may not sound like it has much of a market aside from people who really, really like to read about quinoa and $350 yoga pants, but it’s mesmerizingly readable—mostly because of its Marie Antoinette–esque detachment from reality. It's a glimpse into a magical alternate universe where money is limitless and the most important things in life are selecting the most authentic Corsican spa for a weekend getaway and teaching one’s children to enjoy buckwheat grains. [READ MORE]

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Hannibal: "Apéritif”

(Note: No major spoilers.)

Hannibal is a rare breed in that the first episode is genuinely good, mostly because there's no need for clumsy exposition. Anyone with half a brain already knows what's going on: Hannibal is a cannibal, but it will probably take at least one season  for anyone on TV to work that out. It only takes a couple of minutes to illustrate who Hugh Dancy is: a guy who frowns a lot because of Confused Emotions, and whose brain is a holodeck for blood-spattered crime scenes. Hugh Dancy means we can watch people get murdered in dramatised flashback form, instead of having some generic CSI person explain it to us with Science. 
Mads Mikkelsen is, obviously, fantastic. But for me, the harder sell was always going to be Hugh Dancy's character, criminal profiler Will Graham. Not because I'm familiar with his character (I'm not) but because the crime/mystery genre is already overflowing with cute-ish men in their 30s and 40s. Luckily Graham sidesteps the two main cliches of "asshole genius" and "dorky everyman", and is interesting enough to be a worthwhile foil to Hannibal. Still, like most stories about serial killers, Hannibal mostly features women as side characters or in the role of naked, brutalised corpses. In The Silence of the Lambs, this is less of an issue because Clarice Starling is just as important as Hannibal Lecter, but there's no real need to make a TV series about Clarice. We already know her story too well.

Hannibal Lecter is the ultimate glamorized serial killer, so it was a smart decision to keep him on the sidelines and use the first episode to focus on Will Graham's horrified empathy. While it's pretty easy to film gore and violence, it's harder to make the deaths in a crime show seem as emotionally "interesting" as the investigation process. Audiences are just too used to watching CSI and horror movies. In a serial killer mystery, the victims (as ever, a series of attractive young women whose interchangeable photos are pinned to a map) are often treated like little more than roadblocks on the journey to finding the murderer. Hannibal doesn't make a huge effort to humanise its various corpses (horrifying as they may be), but Will's awkwardness and disgust are very effective.

Visually, I'm already very satisfied. And not just by the pointless but deliciously nerdy set-design nods to The Shining. Even the promotional materials lean pretty heavily on the image of Hannibal as the vampiric centrepiece of a 17th century oil-painting, usually surrounded by fruit and skulls and slabs of raw meat. It must be difficult to avoid going overboard with all that gothic imagery, to be honest. Hannibal's already almost a parody of himself, sitting in a darkened room full of expensive furniture, eating exquisitely flambéed human lungs while the Goldberg Variations play in the background.  

Mads Mikkelsen's costumes simultaneously crack me up and make me sigh because they are soooo good. Here, we're getting to see Hannibal at his absolute peak: taller, better-looking and better dressed than anyone else onscreen. The rest of the cast are serviceable crime procedural characters wearing everyday American TV clothes, but Hannibal looks like... well, exactly what he is. A luxury-obsessed European aristocrat and connoisseur, secretly looking down his nose at all the small-minded American plebs who eat food from chain restaurants and dress like Will Graham.

Graham is deliberately dressed to look soft and harmless, in the wrinkled shirts of an academic who doesn't care about his appearance and sleeps on the floor with ten stray dogs. Hannibal is the absolute opposite, his clothes just another extension of the obsessive care he puts into every other aesthetic aspect of his life. When we see him apart from Graham and the FBI (at his office, or at home by himself) he wears beautifully tailored suits with grace-notes in the form of pocket squares and a tie so wide it's practically a cravat. When he goes on the road with Graham, I suspect his toned-down outfit is for Graham's benefit. Since Hannibal wears a red pocket square and a jacket with metal buttons to eat dinner by himself, I doubt that his sudden adoption of open-necked shirts and conservative v-neck sweaters was for his own comfort.

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Mike Lunsford's "fully-dressed redesigns" of superheroine costumes @ The Daily Dot.

Supergirl may be a woman of steel, but is a red, blue, and gold cheerleader uniform really the most practical outfit for fighting crime? While many superhero costumes can be a little beyond the pale (Ben Affleck’s red pleather catsuit in Daredevil comes to mind), their female counterparts are almost always worse.

Image by Mike Lunsford/ze-tarts.

Superheroine costumes can be a major point of contention for comics fans. Wonder Woman’s red bustier and star-spangled short-shorts are iconic, but do all female superheroes need to wear a swimsuit and heels when battling the forces of darkness? NBC’s failed Wonder Woman pilot tried to redesign her suit with pants rather than a skirt or shorts, but the end result was something that looked more like a Halloween costume. [READ MORE]

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