the decrease in costuming quality over the last 20 years has been soooo precipitous & nauseating. i’m not even talking abt marvel’s cg supersuits or anything this time, look at the fabric quality, structure, layering, character, and craftsmanship of older costumes in 102 dalmations (2000) vs cruella (2021)
ever after (1998) vs cinderella (2021)
lord of the rings (2001-2003) vs the rings of power (2022)
this trend should upset you not just because it looks cheap, but because it suggests a strong anti-art and anti-labor movement in film and tv making. don’t forget costumers are unionized
Ok, but what is happening here is not a degradation of skill. At all. The number of phenomenally talented and knowledgable Costumiers and maker working is astounding. The only thing more astounding is how little they are being properly utilised.
What is happening is a degradation of production schedules. Prep time is constantly being shrunk to the absolute bare minimum which limits design time, fitting time, r&d, sourcing (materials, hardware habdash, etc), making time (drafting, construction, embellishment, etc). Additionally budgets - despite the ridiculous sums of money being sunk - are becoming more shrunk, focused and scrutinised. That feeds back into the materials available (and a dependency on what IS available?, but also staffing levels - smaller workrooms, limited outsourcing etc etc. Schedules are not locked down at all. Ever. Even more so in these Covid times. Scripts aren’t locked down. Ever. Because productions never consider the wider logistics of outlying departments like costume, props etc.
Cast is increasingly last minute, w negotiations dragging out. This limits contact time for development and conception (actors must also be involved int he design process), fittings, etc. I did a job last year where - aside from our two leads - we had zero cast until the week we started shooting which meant we could only do extremely linited advance work plus we had a minuscule team despite being for a huge streaming platform with major stars. On another job we had three (3) days between a principle actor needing a visually iconic costume being cast and being ON CAMERA.
Additionally it is becoming increasingly common for actors to expect higher use of doubles - both stunt and picture doubles m. That means, simply, more costume as they all must have their own. Often in multiples. This with the commonality of stunts means that sometimes as much as 20+ repeats of element of a costume are needed, depending on necessity. That means fabrics are needed in huge quantities, and workrooms must effectively have factory productions. This paired with scheduling limitations above means more often than not we must use what we can get immediately. You know if you could have even a week to source something from, say, Italy, you can get something divine. But there just isn’t the time because you need 60m of specific fabric yesterday. There’s not time to get things made.
So the entire process is streamlined into what can be made in quantity and quickly. Everyone mourns what could be made if we only had the time, money and resources. Everyone know what we could be achieving, should be achieving and want to be achieving. But we just can’t because everything is about immediate, constantly shifting deadlines, high demands and logistics. It’s a nightmare, and we’re all very very tired. As with everything it’s all part of corporate greed. And I haven’t even gone into the twenty levels of executive meddling and the endless rounds of approvals (plus marketing and merchandising approvals etc etc etc it’s unending.)
I’ve been working in film costume for coming on 12 years (ugh), and it has gotten noticeably worse on all of these fronts in just the decade plus I’ve been around. Even in the last five years.
