You asked for it, so here’s an occasional open thread to bitch about anything tangentially related to history, costume, movies, or TV shows! Or whatever else is on your mind right now. Note that URLs are automatically held for moderation, but most anything else goes as long as you’re not bitchier than we are!
Summer time, and the frock flicks are easy, lol! Plenty on TV and even ones coming to theaters that we might venture out to see. In between travel and other summer frivolities, of course. How to choose?
What are your top picks right now?
Becoming Jane is a comfort film for me. But I will never forgive Eimer NÃ Mhaoldomhnaigh for the costuming. Maybe it was temporary insanity? Who knows? But it makes me squirm in my seat each time I see the nutty costumes. Okay…I feel a bit better now, until I watch it again…
About another week until Bridgerton, yay? I’m over the tacky costumes, and the million incoherent subplots, it no longer feels as fresh as it did in 2020, imho! On the other hand, we have Firebrand, which I’m so excited for!
Vera:
my husband found this British detective series with 14 (14!!!!!) seasons. I don’t usually watch this stuff and it was a compromise. I’m glad a relented. It stars Brenda Blethyn and she is just brilliant. What they have done with her costuming is amazing if one’s goal is to tell a character’s story through the decisions they make on how to dress themselves. She wears the most hideous country-girl outfits, all based on the same profile and repeats in different materials. Mostly ugly prints. Print dresses with generous A-line/almost gathered skirts over a sort of shirtwaist top. Print button up shirts in these tiny calico looking prints that are mostly horrible. In a way it is genius. Every episode/nearly every costume change I say to myself, “that is the most hideous outfit I have ever seen,” and then I move on because i accept Vera for who she is and I want to hear what she has to say and do.
The writers have come up with a character that embodies all the traditionally male tropes of the detective married to his work, with a shitty or nonexistent personal life, who drinks just a little too much and doesn’t take care of himself, with a prickly personality, who is inconsiderate of coworkers, who is a genius at inductive AND deductive reasoning and who understands how people and crime work at an instinctive level, and who nevertheless wears his responsibility as head of a big detective squat with authority and confidence . AND THEY MAKE THIS CHARACTER A DUMPY LITTLE WOMAN IN HER 50s WHO DRESSES LIKE SOMEONE FROM THE GRAPES OF WRATH AND/OR BUYS HER CLOTHES AT TRACTOR SUPPLY!!! It’s very impressive, and Brenda Blethyn nails it. I couldn’t believe this was the same actor who played Mrs. Bennett (in her slightly out of fashion costumes) in the 2005 Pride and Prejudice film. And business with the costumes are an integral part of this reversal.
Anyway, I love to look at beautiful costumes, have no training in this area and really love what you guys have to say here at Frock Flicks. I’ve learned a lot from you, and I have learned that sometimes good costuming does not mean that your main character is going to look good. Sometimes it means the opposite. Believe me, it takes a master of the acting craft to make me forget about Vera’s vest that looks like she is wearing the zipped-out inner lining of an anorak. Shiny synthetic with diamond quilting. Hideous.
make that “detective squad” please.