A Short History of Hollywood Costume Design, Decade by Decade

Los Angeles did not invent costume, but it turned costume for the camera into an industry. The best short guide to how that happened comes from the people who do the work: the Costume Designers Guild, IATSE Local 892, keeps a decade-by-decade history of its craft. Combined with the Academy’s award records and the Library of Congress’s research on silent film, it gives a clear outline.

1910s to 1920s: a new job

In the guild’s account, the first moving pictures put costume in front of the public, and as scripts quickly outgrew what actors could do in dressing themselves, costume design for film became a new occupation. Designers such as Travis Banton created signature looks for stars including Marlene Dietrich and Louise Brooks. Most films of this period are now lost; the Library of Congress counts only 14 percent of American silent features surviving complete. See Costumes in Hollywood’s Silent Era: How a New Craft Began, and Why So Little of It Survives.

Films also shaped how audiences dressed. The Library of Congress report notes that motion pictures influenced fashion and leisure and drove the rise of modern celebrity culture. Its example is Colleen Moore, whose starring role in Flaming Youth (1923) personified the flapper; by 1926 she was the top female star, receiving more than 10,000 fan letters a week.

1927 to 1940s: sound, color and studio glamour

The guild marks 1927 and the coming of sound as the start of Hollywood’s golden age of glamour. It singles out Bernard Newman’s work on the Astaire and Rogers musical Top Hat, Gilbert Adrian’s costumes for The Wizard of Oz in 1939, including the ruby slippers, and Walter Plunkett’s Gone with the Wind. Adrian’s collaboration with Joan Crawford, the guild says, minted the strong-shouldered silhouette of the 1940s, while Orry-Kelly’s Casablanca epitomized film noir and Edward Manson Stevenson designed Citizen Kane and It’s a Wonderful Life. Many of these designers worked under contract to the studios; Inside Golden Age Studio Wardrobe Departments: Designers, Costumers and the Studio Costume House explains that system.

1949 and 1953: recognition and organization

Two dates in this period changed the profession’s standing. The Academy gave its first costume design awards at the 21st Academy Awards in 1949, with separate categories for black-and-white and color films; The Academy Award for Costume Design: When It Began, Why There Were Two, and Milestones Since covers the category’s history. Then, as the guild puts it, the Hollywood studio system dissolved, and in 1953 nine film costume designers founded the Costume Designers Guild. It negotiated contracts for designers who were freelance or under contract to a studio, and in 1976 it joined the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees as Local 892.

1950s: postwar glamour and a new audience

The guild’s history pairs two very different images from the 1950s: William Travilla’s billowing white halter dress for Marilyn Monroe, and Moss Mabry’s gritty realism in Rebel Without a Cause, which spoke to a new audience, the teenager. Edith Head’s Roman Holiday and Orry-Kelly’s Some Like It Hot appear in the same decade.

1960s and 1970s: television and realism

Television gained influence. The guild credits William Ware Theiss with Star Trek’s costumes on NBC and John Mollo with Star Wars, while Bob Mackie and Ret Turner brought glamour to television variety shows. Rita Riggs dressed sitcoms such as All in the Family and The Jeffersons. On film, Ruth Morley’s Annie Hall, Joe Aulisi’s Shaft and Theadora Van Runkle’s Bonnie and Clyde shaped fashion, and Milena Canonero’s Barry Lyndon and Piero Tosi’s The Leopard became benchmarks of historical accuracy.

1980s and 1990s: blockbusters and auteurs

• Blockbusters married star power and effects: Deborah Nadoolman’s Raiders of the Lost Ark and Deborah Lynn Scott’s E.T.
• Michael Kaplan and Charles Knode created the looks of Blade Runner.
• Directors and designers paired up: Quentin Tarantino with Betsy Heimann, David Lynch with Patricia Norris, Tim Burton with Colleen Atwood.
• Deborah Lynn Scott designed Titanic, Mona May Clueless, Kym Barrett The Matrix, and Ruth E. Carter worked with Spike Lee and other filmmakers.

2000 to today: the screens converge

In the guild’s telling, streaming and smartphones closed the gap between large and small screens, and television costume grew in scope with series such as Mad Men, designed by Janie Bryant, Boardwalk Empire and Game of Thrones. The guild also records Ruth E. Carter’s Oscar for Black Panther as the first costume Oscar for a Black woman.

Seeing the history

Los Angeles collections hold pieces of this history. LACMA’s Costume and Textiles department has more than 35,000 objects, and the ASU FIDM Museum lists film costumes among its 15,000-plus fashion objects. Start with Where to See Film Costumes in Los Angeles: Museums, Hours and What to Check First.