Costume Designer Pierre-Yves Gayraud: the Frock Flicks Guide

I’m super bummed, because I was recently in Paris while Colours of Time (2025) was in the theaters, but I didn’t realize it was a historical movie based on the posters. Turns out it’s a modern AND historical film, and the costumes — by French costume designer Pierre-Yves Gayraud — look outstanding:

While we wait the inevitable decade it will take for this film to EVER be available in the US, I thought I could hold myself over by looking back at Gayraud’s other historical work. He’s been working in French film since the early 1990s, and he’s certainly done substantial work!

 

Le brasier (1991)

A story of “workers and bosses, friends and enemies, and father and son” (IMDB) set during the 1930s.

 

Indochine (1992)

Set in Vietnam during French colonial rule, a European woman adopts a Vietnamese girl, there’s a love triangle, and an uprising against colonial rule.

 

Justinien Trouvé, ou le bâtard de Dieu (1993)

A take on the Cyrano de Bergerac character? “Young Justinien, aka Cyrano-Nose-The-Less, born in 1683, leaves his adoptive parents to join a monastery, only to live a series of misadventures through which he will learn the secrets of his birth” per IMDB.

 

Total Eclipse (1995)

19th-century French poets Rimbaud and Verlaine “engage in a fierce, forbidden romance while feeling the effects of a hellish artistic lifestyle” (IMDB).

 

L’allée du roi (1996)

A drama about the marquise de Maintenon, mistress to Louis XIV.

 

East/West (1999)

Set in 1946, when Stalin invites Russian exiles to return to the USSR.

 

La guerre à Paris (2002)

Set in 1943, in Occupied Paris.

 

24 heures de la vie d’une femme (2002)

A man returns to a casino he visited as an adolescent; set in 1913, 1936, and 2001.

 

Man to Man (2005)

Set in 1860, two Victorian scientists working in Africa begin to doubt their mission.

 

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006)

A weird but interesting story about a poor young man who becomes a perfumer, while also killing women. Set in mid-18th century France.

 

Sa majesté Minor (2007)

“A mythical comedy set on an island in the Aegean Sea before the founding of Ancient Greece” (IMDB).

 

Coco Chanel (2008)

A TV movie biopic of the legendary fashion designer.

 

The Countess (2009)

A take on the story of Countess Erzsébet Báthory, who was convicted of torturing and killing dozens of young girls in 17th-century Hungary.

 

 

Tomorrow at Dawn (2009)

I’m unclear what this film is about; the title references a Victor Hugo poem, the images I’ve found seem to mix modern and historical.

 

The Well-Digger’s Daughter (2011)

“In 1930s southern France, a father is torn between his sense of honor and his deep love for his daughter when she gets in trouble with the wealthy son of a shopkeeper” (IMDB).

 

The Three Musketeers (2011)

One of the many, MANY adaptations of the 17th-century-set Alexandre Dumas story.

And Pierre– Yves Gayraud, the costume designer, found all these materials and the textures of the brocade, or the weight of the fabric in the folds of the costumes and drapery, all these all had their own kind of dimensional effect.”

The costumes had another significant effect as Milla Jovovich was determined to do her action scenes properly costumed in corset and full skirt. “Usually in period movies where women have action scenes, they end up dressing like men,” Anderson says, “because (the period) costumes are hard enough to walk in or even breathe in, never mind do a fight scene in.” This meant that when choreographing the fight, Jovovich had to wear specially constructed training gear made to re-create the weight and fit of the eventual costume.

“There were certain moves that she just couldn’t do,” he says, “but some things looked so much more spectacular because she was wearing the skirt and I thought, 4We have to see that skirt twirling in the air.’ I’d say we changed about 60% of what we had planned once she started rehearsing with the actual costume.” (‘Musketeers’ rebooted for a 3D gen)

 

Albert Nobbs (2011)

A story about a biological woman living as a man in late-19th-century Ireland.

“The trick was to make this beautiful actress look good as a man in the late 1800s in Ireland. If that wasn’t believable, where would we be? Honestly, I think we did it very well… The important thing for Nobbs was that he was not somebody who had the money to go to a tailor, so we had to create a secondhand look, one that made sense for someone in his means — and besides, as a woman she couldn’t go to a tailor for her clothes! So we mixed new and also second-hand things” (The Contender: Pierre-Yves Gayraud on dressing Glenn Close as a man)

 

In Secret (2013)

An adaptation of an Emile Zola novel, in which (at least on screen) a lot of boring stuff happens with an extended sex scene in the middle. Set in 1860 Paris.

 

Beauty and the Beast (2014)

A VERY fantasy adaptation of the fairy tale, but I’m including it because the costumes are EPIC.

 

The Promise (2016)

A love story unfolds in the Ottoman Empire, during World War I and the Armenian Genocide.

 

The Emperor of Paris (2018)

A biopic about the thief who went on to found the Paris police department during Napoleon’s reign.

 

Babylon Berlin (2017-25)

A German TV series set in the Weimar Republic, beginning in 1929, in the club scene.

 

Hagen (2024)

More fantasy I believe, but an adaptation of a Viking story.

 

Colours of Time (2025)

Various modern cousins who don’t know each other inherit a country house and end up somehow retracing the steps of their 19th-century ancestors. I’ll be seeing this the minute I can!

 

Which of Pierre-Yves Gayraud’s costumes designs have made an impact on you?