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Published in:
2013 | OriginalPaper | Chapter
Costumes and Gowns: The Rise of the Specialist Film Costume Designer
Author : Michelle Tolini Finamore
Published in: Hollywood Before Glamour
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan UK
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The 1918 film You Can’t Believe Everything (Triangle Film Corp., dir. Jack Conway) included an elaborate dinner sequence in which the guests, dressed in bathing suits, participated in a “Neptune party” aboard a floating barge. For the scene, Triangle’s costume designer Peggy Hamilton created special bathing suits that also functioned as eveningwear. According to the promotional copy, instead of the usual wool, these bathing suits were made of silks and satins “trimmed in various ornamental effects.” The bathing suit that Hamilton created for Gloria Swanson was titled “Aviation” and made of gray and military green satin, and its unusual design was featured in much of the press about the film (Figure 5.1).1 By 1918, garments such as Swanson’s bathing/dinner ensemble, which followed contemporary fashion trends but were most emphatically fantasy “costumes” created by in-house specialist designers, were becoming increasingly common.