I went in as a guest speaker for a friend's theater class this week. Cari's husband Aaron asked if I could give a lecture for a class he was assigned at North Shore, and I decided it might be fun to introduce the idea of costume-choices-as-narrative. It's something I LOVE discussing but have very little opportunity to focus on in my regular instruction.
Bernie made the intriguing suggestion of choosing a particular character whose wardrobe changes with their nature and their circumstances, and explaining how it helps support telling their story. He recommended Captain America from the MCU— seeing as I knew him very well, the students were likely to have some frame of reference about him, and I likely wouldn't even need to look up a ton of visuals. My iPad is already choked to death on them, after all.
Of course, he and some others I mentioned it to warned me not to be too gross about discussing how Chris Evans looks and was dressed. The students didn't know me, after all, and I didn't want to seem creepy. I was a touch indignant, but acknowledge the point. The class was to be about the clothes and styling choices, after all, and while casting definitely affects how they make those choices, I didn't want to muddy the focus.
The hilarious thing was, THEY couldn't stop talking about how hot he was. The few times I had to rein them back into the discussion, they had gone off talking to each other about it— boys and girls alike. I managed to stay uncreepy, I think, but that amused the hell out of me.
I explained things about where the character was at any given time. How they made him look as unflattering and unimpressive as possible when he was skinny and asthmatic with clothes that didn't fit great, were in dull colors, and had 1940s period touches that read as "dorky" today, like short ties and suspenders. How even post-transformation he is still the same modest person on the inside, so still prefers conventional, low-key styles in a blue, white, and gray color palette. How when he first arrives in the 21st Century, he dresses in clothes that a person could have worn at any point between then and 1930 without really seeming strange, but would look at home on any grandpa— pleated, high-waisted trousers, blue plaid button-downs. But even when he updates his look to be more contemporary, with lower rise jeans and jackets with high-tech fabric and interesting seaming, he still sticks with simple looks that do not draw a lot of attention. How his one small dressing affectation is a love of brown leather jackets, likely learned in the army, that he updates with more and more modern styling periodically. How they keep him in those palette and styling parameters to contrast with Tony Stark. He's old enough to be Steve's father, but Tony is flashy and attention-seeking, with more red and black, dressing young for his age where Steve dresses old, in designer suits, graphic T's, and glasses with colored lenses. I dealt with the superhero suit as well, of course, but in a more general sense, pointing out its evolution through the circumstances in which Steve wears it, how it got more modern and functional in design, and how its breakdown is used to demonstrate how low he is by the time we've gotten to Infinity War.
I also brought in things about Mrs. Hawking, pointing out that theatrical circumstances require broader strokes, and how we work on a limited budget. I pointed out how many characters are associated with certain colors, like Clara with green and Mary with blue, to help audience members identify them, and to draw contrasts and connections. I pointed out how Mrs. Frost's blue and white is her attempt to seem innocuous, so when Clara confronts her in green and black she looks oppositional and threatening against her, and how Clara's fur coat functions like a form of armor. I compared Mrs. Hawking's super suit to Madam Malaika's, how they served to both underline the women's deep similarities as heroes as well as their vast differences. I pointed out how in Frost's scenes there is basically no color except HER color, and the significance of her tying it around Nathaniel's neck is a declaration of her power over him.
I wanted to give them a taste of everything you can do, and how creative you can be to say things with your choices. I had to pick and choose a few evocative moments, as there's so many possibilities for how costuming can be used. There are dozens more things in Mrs. Hawking that could be discussed on this level. And I tried to keep things a little on the simple side for the sake of introduction.
Like, I cut out some of Steve's outfits like the athletic wear in the "On your left" scene at the top of Winter Soldier. I'm ninety percent sure they have a relationship with Under Armour that required them to dress him in a way that made him look as hot in it as possible, but I don't really think it's totally diegetic that he'd wear his clothes that tight. It's not just too showy; it's borderline vulgar, to be honest. I think you can justify it in-story with the idea that he's never totally come to "own" his new body, to reconcile the reality of it with his self-image, and so doesn't have the best sense of what's going to fit it. But honestly, the character that they've established him to be is going to be slightly embarrassed to go outside like that, in the absence of concerns like "using Chris Evans's considerable assets to sell tickets."
I've always wanted to teach a full-semester
theory of costume design class, but never have had the opportunity before, so this was super fun for me. It also makes me want to do a fuller exegesis on Steve's journey through costuming, about what all his looks say from a narrative standpoint. It's a study I'm fascinated by, and I had so much fun getting to teach other people about it for a little bit.
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