Class Summary of readings

‘Undressing Cinema’.

This article addresses the use of clothes as mechanisms of display. It favours high fashion, and discusses Edith Head's role in Sabrina. She was superseded as a costume designer by Givenchy in terms of grandeur. This constructs costume design as less important than the role of the couturier. Film fashions were no longer subservient to the plot, character and camera, but they were upgraded to become a spectacle in their own right. Chanel’s aim is to project beauty upon the woman wearing it. She had an interesting idea that is a woman's dress was seen as beautiful, she was dressed badly, but if she was seen to be beautiful, then she was dressed well. This idea relates to the theory about the fashioned construction of a facade. The superficiality of a fashioned appearance is uncovered in the makeover films which hollywood favours. What Chanel is suggesting is that the more seamless this representation is, the more she adopts this fashioned persona, the more beautiful she will appear. Chanel and YSL film costumes were often minimalist, but supported the character. Armani played an important role in the transformation of male fashioned identity. Men used to have to dress them selves in film. Now; it is not exclusively feminine to dress well. Gaultier designs for the narrative, Chanel does not. She imposed her own narrative through the clothes. Film can be a vehicle for a particular designer’s fashion. Look at live action film and animation. There is a real art to designing costumes for animation.

'Hot Couture: Brigitte Bardot’s Fashion Revolution'.

Brigitte grew up in a wealthy setting with a very fashionable, well connected mother. Started a Childlike fashion revival, including gingham and broderie anglaise. Emblem of youth with overtly feminine dress +radical American youth clothes: James Dean’s jeans. Beatnik Duffle coats.

Bardot’s generation had economic freedom, but not social, therefore used delinquency and Cinephilia as outlets. She was essentially revolting against the feminine construct which had been presented to her by her mother and her mother's peers.

Her clothes: child like but ostentatiously sexualized.

Choucroute hairstyle combined invitation and defiance. Simultaneously said fuck me, and fuck you. ‘Bardot adopted and promoted fashion that liberated the body (and hair) from the constraints of rigid couture outfits, leaving behind bourgeois conventions.’ Simplicity and cheapness.

Bardot rejected couture as ‘for grannies’ and promoted young designers. Bardot’s clothes easily reproducible, so she was the centre of fashion production and consumption change. Youth and joie de vivre. She was an essential figure in the rise of the teenager and the working class.

Her ‘highly sexed behaviour lost its appeal in 'the permissive age', her fashion sense was no longer innovative.’

Bardot in 2011 has formed a completely different identity. Now it is ‘offensive’ to look as if she does not give a toss. Going against the constructed image.

'Brad and George'.

Brad- Acessible. George- smooth guy, unavailable. Not dressed in a sexualized way. Out of Sight. Only time his body is shown, even then, he is in white boxer shorts, and not sexualized. Brad is body, George is brain. He covered up body has more mystique than the naked body. Cary Grant was bisexual. Rock Hudson was gay. George models himself around these images. Narrow set of types in cinema. Needs to be challenged. Not enough is written on this. Women had to fight a lot, for feminism… have learnt articulation about empowerment for gender, but men have not learnt this. Masculinity needs to be written about.

With marketing and branding, be inventive!!!! All of the good decisions were made by people outside the business. The Player. Robert Altman. Opening sequence. Nashville.

'The taste of time'.

Postwar shifts in taste. Stylistic differences in Architecture. Blue poles. Jackson Pollock painting. Government acquired it. Says culture is important. Started Australian society looking at art.

Bauhaus. Postwar emphasis on individuality, but was actually unsuccessful.

'The Fifties'.

Social oppression of women. Married young. Their duty to society. Happy housewife. Women’s place was raising families, not in the workplace. Helped equality in some ways. Togetherness. Men came back into the home after work, and helped out. McKinsey report. Women sexuality equal or higher to men. This changed the representation of women, which was portrayed in film. Sex had been the domain of men, not of women. Women were seen to just put up with it. New contraception enabled this freedom. Shift in puritan values. Cone bra. Sex symbol. Celebrity scene. Jane Mansfield. Breasts insured for $1,000,000. What happened outside the film was just as important as what happened inside. Mansfield and Bardot portrayed a new childlike sexuality. Now, not a shift in the type of women portrayed, just shifting it trend-wise.

Child-like glorification. Why can’t people grow up? Extension of childhood started postwar. Bardot image acknowledges this. Before that, you weren’t taken seriously unless you were an adult. Teenagers were considered valid.

Media in the ‘50s was very censored. Women’s sexual roles changed. Enabled the revolution of the ‘60s.

Now still censorship. Radical sites now; Wikileaks. No editing or opinions, just information.

Politics, subcultures, fashion, art, architecture… sources for information are controlled by the dollar. We think we live in radical times. Some things change, but some things don’t change at all.

General knowledge. To be truly inventive you need to look outside of your area of expertise, not cannibalise it.

Now; source of knowledge is so easy to access that it does not require a difficult journey to obtain specific information. We know the google stores the information, so we do not worry about storing it ourselves.

Red eye records.

Think there will be a reaction by humans, against information overload. Relate this to design practise. If you want to make a mark in design, you have to take a risk in your sources, usually go offline.