Fashion in cinema and the columns of the 40s

Elisa Nori
Mar 10, 2022
5 min read

Updated: Mar 31, 2023

Here we are in the awaited appointment in which I introduce and recommend you, through a list as for the previous decade, the most famous films of the 40s.

Equally for these films, the difference was also made by the clothes and costumes, like a crown placed on a royal head such as cinema, sealing a timeless victory.

Dresses and costumes like many other realities, require technique and preparation, meticulous attention and fussiness alongside the inevitable imagination and inspiration.

From here I would like to deepen the discussion with you for a moment, precisely because among the titles I have chosen, great and powerful directors stand out... but also great and indelible actors and actresses.

Stylists study for years to ensure that their creations are perfect for both theater and cinema.

Inspiration, like the idea, are used to kick off the project, certainly for the initial sketch...

A bit like the subject for a screenwriter...

But then you have to know how to write the treatment and subsequently, the whole script of that subject/treatment... and I guarantee it's pages and pages of sweat.

Without tangible and real skills, the result of attempts, trials and exercises... everything risks remaining just a beautiful dream or worse... a nice hole in the water!!!

So that then you are forced to join other more prepared, to finish projects that have not taken off or justify yourself by saying the classic..."Who goes healthy goes..."

I would immediately interrupt and remember..."Aren't you bragging about running?"

Excuse me!!! Professional deformation in anticipating dialogues and imagining them!!!

The technique requires methodical reasoning, because the more information there is, the greater the concentration in processing it must be... if we want the brain to start fueling, getting into motion more consistently!!!

Costume designers are included, like any other employee in his sector and must always understand what they are doing and how they are doing it!!!

Can you imagine them running here and there wearing pieces of fabric dictated only by inspiration, and yet to be sewn? The need to adapt and the unexpected can always happen... But making it a lifestyle is definitely another planet!!!

Airborne ideas, best applied by choosing one method over another, are the choices and moves of beginners, who improvise because they often don't admit that they are prepared to an insufficient level.

There's no justification for doing anything we can think of because so much "IT'S ART"..."I JACKED"

It may be fine for you once ... even the second ... but as dear Pablo Picasso said:

Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like a performer.

If this were not the case, cinema would be ruined... Imagine if a director were to put himself in the hands, on a set, of a team of people who do things "as best they can" and without any competence or knowledge of what they are doing , but "by being dictated by inspiration".

Apart from generating an absurd chaos and precious waste of time that only those who know what it means to be on a set can fully understand...very deeply...especially if you coordinate not only yourself but at least fifteen/twenty people and then increase on the huge sets.

Try telling a cinematographer or a camera operator...unless they're drunk!!! Jokes aside...

Cinema is already complex in itself and leads to collective responsibilities, not as an individual who produces a good and which at most is sent home with its "creation".

It's always the director who puts his face first and answers for everyone... That's why you also need to be technical... and I learned this precisely by pretending it was one of the things that interested me the least, when I was very young and rebellious, because I knew that I should improve and not complain about the work of others, or what was my responsibility.

The same should be true for others as well. Then there are further decidedly more technical sectors, see every field related to science, where calculations cannot be invented or improvised... But this also in architecture itself... to give yet another example...

There would be countless.

That's why few manage to build truly mammoth and eternal constructions, which enter the history of art. Teachers.

A technical book, when we know we're not really up to it, is the right answer, because it's a symbol of intelligence: I KNOW I DON'T KNOW. Socrates.

If you don't have technique, you can have all the ideas in the world but they will be mediocre or often completely inadequate. You'll have to settle for finding the right way to make them concrete, ending up reading that book you've been avoiding so much.

I would never give something to build, to design something to a person who claims that she will choose the method ... No! There are precise ways to do certain things in all sectors...apart from those who pretend to have a job. :(

And if we have fun switching devices off and on, just because we try to be someone else and pretend we know how to use them to impress, well... Everyone has the illusion of being whoever they want!!! It could be a good subject for a film between the other. :)

I play down so as not to underline the seriousness of certain thoughts, which distort reality as they please, to adapt it and not to adapt to it.

After all, the facts always speak for themselves.

But let's get back to us... The concept is clear. Every sector, including the cinematographic one, must be a well-functioning and organized apparatus. Well oiled...Otherwise the gears stop.

Enjoy your vision everyone!!!

Because these columns are suggestions, opportunities and inputs to improve, not to be satisfied but above all to reason with an open mind and not those who reject what they don't know... a form of fear among other things.

Perhaps afraid to admit reality.

Humility and a willingness to learn have made certain names great.

Knowledge and continuous judgment towards the work of others and never towards one's own, have made many easily forgettable, some even in just one month!!! Certainly not these films to follow... They made history!!!