You Are What You--Wear?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Scarlett O’Hara’s curtain dress, of course. When you’re talking about the best and most memorable movie costumes ever, that’s on the list. 

EVERYTHING Grace Kelly wore in Rear Window, including that little cosmetic bag.  



Slinky exec Faye Dunaway in Network, and always-icy-chic Miranda Priestly, and Rita Hayworth’s black strapless Gilda dress, and Ilse’s slouchy Casablanca hat, and …well, I’ll going to have to stop myself.

My very favorite move costume ever, though, is the dress Audrey Hepburn wore in the tennis court dance scene of Sabrina.

Or wait, maybe Julie Christie’s furs in Dr. Z?  Or Rene Russo’s backless gown in the new Thomas Crown Affair. Remember that? Anyway. Enough from me.

But that is why I also swoon over “Renee Patrick’s” new novel—featuring Edith Head! Ah. Such a brilliant idea!

So we’ll let Renee—who is really Rosemarie and Vince Keenan—tell all.

REAL OR REEL, CLOTHES MAKE THE CHARACTER

by Rosemarie Keenan

Ask any costume designer and she’ll tell you costume design is all about character. As a writer, I can get behind that. Characters become living, breathing people on the page when we convey their thoughts, their words, their actions. And of course, when we describe their clothes.

In Design for Dying, we spend a fair amount of time describing what our characters are wearing. It’s not just because we love clothes. (OK, I love clothes. Vince is largely indifferent.) It’s because one half of our detective team is the legendary costume designer Edith Head. How legendary was she? Edith had a Hollywood career spanning seven decades. She was nominated for thirty-five Academy awards and took home eight of the statuettes, the most of any woman.

The diminutive designer, consistently clad in her trademark tailored suits with dark bangs and tinted glasses, knew that character could be revealed by costuming. “The story is your Bible,” she wrote in her 1959 memoir The Dress Doctor. “First and above all, what kind of character are we dressing?”

Take Double Indemnity (1944) for example. In that film the character Edith outfitted was a manipulative woman with murder on her mind. Barbara Stanwyck plays the scheming Phyllis Dietrichson, intent on entrapping Fred MacMurray’s Walter Neff. Phyllis’ seduction of Neff is executed through wardrobe. Stanwyck’s form becomes more concealed as the film progresses; how could it not when the movie begins with Phyllis clad in a towel? In the “honey of an anklet” scene she flashes her gams. Phyllis later arrives at Neff’s apartment in a not particularly daring skirt-and-sweater ensemble—except her brasserie is visible beneath the angora, a brazen reminder of her agenda. By the time of their supermarket rendezvous, Phyllis is armored in a long-sleeved blouse with a tailored checked vest.

Poor Walter didn’t understand what Edith knew and practiced. She states it plainly in The Dress Doctor: “Clothes not only can make the woman, they can make her several different women.”

Edith didn’t save her sartorial smarts for movie murderesses or even the beautiful people of Hollywood. She offered advice to the average woman through her books, newspaper columns and regular appearances on Art Linkletter’s radio and television shows. Edith diagnosed the fashion faux pas of the ladies in the audience, teaching them how to camouflage flaws and accentuate strong points.

Such style tips provide a connection between Edith and her detecting partner, Lillian Frost, in Design for Dying. While investigating the murder of an aspiring starlet, found in a costume stolen from Paramount Pictures, Edith teaches Lillian a few things about dressing, including how to use a belt to create a makeshift peplum top, lending the illusion of curves to Lillian’s somewhat boyish frame.

“The way you dress – or package yourself – is the one thing over which you have absolute control. You can’t change the size of your feet, the shape of your legs, the color of your eyes or the texture of your hair – but you can change the way you look as easily as an actress does each time she plays a new role.” Edith Head, How To Dress For Success

I’ve certainly packaged myself in different ways over the years, changing styles more often than a con man changes IDs. Pink jeans and a leather jacket during my New Wave phase, a black mini-skirt and glossy red lipstick in the late 80’s (remember Robert Palmer’s Addicted to Love video?), khaki-casual through much of the 90s (I know, what was I thinking?). Once I hit my forties though, and now entering my debut author phase, I finally know my type. These days I’d describe it as “as close to Amal Clooney as I can afford.”

 From time to time I still want to change those unchangeable aspects of my appearance that Edith catalogued but as always, she was right. No matter how often I try on the size eight slingback pumps I always walk out of the store with the size nines.

And what of my co-writer? Some of Edith’s style savvy has rubbed off on him too. I mean, just look at these shoes.

HANK: Love this! And VInce, very very fancy forties.  So Reds, let’s talk about movie clothing! What do you love and remember? What worked for you, and why?

DESIGN FOR DYING

Los Angeles, 1937. Lillian Frost has traded dreams of stardom for security as a department store salesgirl ... until she discovers she’s a suspect in the murder of her former roommate Ruby Carroll. Party girl Ruby died wearing a gown she stole from the wardrobe department at Paramount Pictures, domain of Edith Head.

Edith has yet to win the first of her eight Academy Awards; right now she’s barely hanging on to her job, and a scandal is the last thing she needs. To clear Lillian’s name and save Edith’s career, the two women join forces. Unraveling the mystery pits them against a Hungarian princess on the lam, a hotshot director on the make, and a private investigator who’s not on the level.

All they have going for them are dogged determination, assists from the likes of Bob Hope and Barbara Stanwyck, and a killer sense of style. In show business, that just may be enough…

RENEE PATRICK

Renee Patrick is the pseudonym for married authors Rosemarie and Vince Keenan. Rosemarie is a research administrator and a poet. Vince is a screenwriter and a journalist. Both native New Yorkers, they currently live in Seattle, Washington.

You can friend Renee on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ReneePatrickAuthor), follow her on Twitter (RPatrickBooks) or find more information at her website: http://reneepatrickbooks.com