fear the living
On this damp rainy day, I sat contemplating how I would usher in the second year to this blog. As I do month after month ideas usually pop into my brain unprompted, either a topic, or a film, and I run forward formulating these into cohesive segments. Despite the warmer weather making its way into the northeast, I have been finding this romance and draw back to gothic literature, which usually comes across cold and barren. I recently discovered that Guillermo del Toro’s 2015 film Crimson Peak was now on Netflix. Having wanted to see it for a while now I was entranced by it. I do not know how I missed it when it came out, but I think I was in the throws for grad school and had not come up for air yet.
Set partially in Buffalo NY in the summer of 1901, the story quickly dissolves into this cold barren atmosphere of Northern England. This is one of my favorite moments in fashion history as well, so I knew that this was a piece I needed to cover. At the turn of the 20th century, we see a shift in garments that are drastic, we also have the last era of looking to monarchs for fashion trends (even here in the states) as we begin WWI our idle fascination with keeping up appearances is quickly thrown into war and other pressing matters. What was once the era of opulence, ends the decade with a rejection of those ideas and starts cutting the form down to a much simpler silhouette. Edith (Mia Wasikowska) is the image of the new modern woman. Not bound by corsets, full of life and fertility. Lady Lucille (Jessica Chastain) is her complete opposite. Ridged and clinging to an old way of life, bound by thick fabrics and corsets. Costume Designer Kate Hawley, through her language of color and texture, has give us the fingerprint of each woman with out having to speak a word. That is the testament of a great costume designer, before the character even utters their first word, we know exactly who they are.
She has used the set space of both New York and England to show how both women are outcasts when placed in the others world. In Buffalo, Lucille is harsh to the eye. Her colors are deeper and more pronounced, adding small details of embellishments, like inner parts of her soul, so concealed in the fabric we almost miss them on first glance. And isn’t that what we do? We are not prepared for the horrors that await us on her behalf. We do not realize what she has inflicted on to others time after time. We are pulled in by her beauty her air of sophistication, but behind that is the awful truth. Where Edith fits right at home. She mirrors the warm colors of her home in summer, florals and butterflies lie within her overly large leg-o-mutton sleeves. Edith becomes summer itself wrapping us in her warmth, where trees bloom and the wildlife flourish.
When she is then brought to Crimson Peak, she looks to alive for this barren land and dilapidated home. Further consuming all its inhabitants. Where Lucille seams to bleed into the walls and becomes apart of the home. She fits, as though she never has left. The tightness and heaviness of the fabrics, speaks to the structureless home. She is what is keeping the entirety of the building from collapsing into nothing. Lucille and her brother Thomas (Tom Hiddleston) have spent their entire lives together under that roof (or lack thereof) and preserving the home and the legacy of the family is in their highest priority. Even so much as trapping young woman into their fold to leech away their fortunes. Sir Thomas, like Lucille, is always shown in dark heavy fabrics. They are always covered up to the neck, as is the style of the time, but also speaking to all that they conceal and hid.
The layers that Kate uses on her characters follows the operatic beats, of the story that Guillermo is telling. This high and low flow of protection and vulnerability. Even down to how each woman wears her hair. From tight practical updos to the finale where each woman has borne all who she is. Lucille is known for what she is and what she has done. Before her final defeat, her vulnerability needs to match Edith’s.
Sleepwear is an effect device used by costume designers. It is when we are most vulnerable, in an unconscious state anything can happen to us. Our clothing matches. For women of the day nightgowns were the only proper dress to sleep in, but an already vulnerable garment providing no protection to our most vulnerable piece of us (which is protected when wearing pants), is also exposing the rest of ourselves. Lightweight fabrics and softer colors mirror these sentiments. By this, Kate is allowing the two women to see each other for exactly who they are, light colors, create a camouflage when they are facing each other one last time in that blustering snow. Creating an even more powerful image when blood is drawn. With a story with crimson in the title, you must effectively use that color to create drama. When we see it earlier against her yellow dress, she is still bright and full of life, only starting to become effected by not only the poison that she is being given, but the deceit. When we see it in our final scene it is against the white of her dressing gown and the paleness of her skin. She has given all that she could, and they tried to take that life from her, but was unsuccessful. In the end Edith won and her life has been saved.
Kate has so brilliantly given us a visual opera that, like I mentioned earlier, tracks the flow of the story, and has also created its own distinctive note. This movie could not work without the use of the garments as devises in this manner. The subtly and detail that comes into each piece, chips away at the outer shell of who these people are. We are given them, even if they are not willing giving themselves to us.
