Brief history of film costumes and their demise

When the film industry began, costume designers and studio costume departments did not exist and costumes were provided from the closets of the actors themselves, from the few existing costume houses for theatrical productions or actual vintage period costumes that were already in fragile condition.  As the industry grew, studios such as MGM, 20th Century Fox, Warner Brothers and Paramount created costume departments that created everything the actors would wear from the underpinnings, costume, hats, shoes, accessories and jewelry, sometimes numbering into thousands of pieces.  For the studios that did not have a costume department, several costume rental houses began to pop up or they could borrow or rent costumes from a studio wardrobe department.  Even though the costumes for the film’s principal stars were often crafted as fine couture fashion, they were created for one scene in one movie and were not always required to last any longer than needed for the film.  They were often made from the finest delicate materials and sometimes from a combination of fabrics that would inherently destroy each other.  An example of this would be some of the beaded gowns, constructed of the sheerest fabrics to avoid bulk and then ornamented with the heaviest beads and sharp-edged faceted stones. Not only did the beads cut and pull on the fabric, the thousands of holes created in the beading process weakened the fabric.  During the depression, Hollywood had money when the rest of the world did not, so they would scour the world for the finest fabrics and sometimes, as in the case with the 1939 “Marie Antoinette” purchase vintage fabrics from the actual time period.  The ways these fabrics were made and dyed often resulted in a garment that was inherently fragile.  For example, taffeta was at one time made by weaving silk fibers with metallic fibers to give the fabric its stiffness.   It created a beautiful fabric, but also split over time as the metal fibers cut through the silk. The ways that these garments were used in the film sometimes weakened the fabric.  For example, swimsuits that were created for Esther Williams from fine satins and faceted rhinestones and then going into a heavily chlorinated pool was not a good formula for survival.  When the films were completed, costumes would go into storage to be used again and again, on the backs of secondary or background characters to maintain an opulent look without the expense of making new ones.  It was very seldom that a major star would be asked to wear a costume designed and worn by another major star- even though it did happen.  Costumes would be resized, dyed or re-styled as the script demanded and used on secondary characters.  In the war years, when the government regulated the use of fabrics, costumes would often be taken apart for the fabric or beads.

 Film costumes were ‘work product’ and held little importance after the production was completed.  They were not considered historical artifacts and were often sent out to promote the film, given away or used again and re-cut in whatever way would benefit a new production.  As the studio collections grew, the care that was spent on them in storage was less and less.  They were certainly not kept in archival conditions; some being stored in unused sound stages or temporary buildings built as sets.  They would be exposed to extreme heat in the summer and would leak in the rainy seasons and often became nesting grounds for various animals.  Survival of costumes sometime depended on how tightly they were crammed onto the racks, thus giving them some type of protection. As time went on, many costumes hanging on wooden hangers, which are notorious for high acid content, literally ripped through the shoulders.    

 When the studio system began to decline in the 60’s and 70’s , the space taken up by these old costumes and other by-products of the industry, was far too valuable, so the departments were cleaned out and buried in landfill or as with MGM, totally sold off.  The few film costume collectors that existed at the time did purchase many of the costumes, but the bulk of the costumes were sold to rental houses.  A rental company in New Orleans, purchased racks of some of the finest costumes ever created from the 1939 film “Marie Antoinette” to be rented out and worn at Marti Gras until they fell apart. When one looks at the millions of incredible costumes that were created for films and the ones that have survived, or at least survived in a condition that approached the beauty of the original designs, there are relatively few.