Famous dresses from films that became iconic in the history of cinema

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

To create the image of a movie hero, you need to take into account many components, and one of the most important is his outfit. History contains many examples of true masterpieces created by costume designers. Some of these dresses have become even more popular than the films in which they shone. After all, today hardly anyone remembers the movie "The Seven Year Itch", but Marilyn's "flying" dress still breaks popularity records.

Curtain Dress, Gone with the Wind (Vivien Leigh, 1939)

One of Scarlett's most important outfits in the story is a velvet curtain dress, in which she goes to prison to see Ratt Butler. Costume designer Walter Plunkett specifically studied the fashion of a bygone era, even traveled to the places described in the novel, and met people who still remembered the Civil War. The result is beautiful costumes for a cult film that are not entirely historically accurate, but give the viewer the right sense of time. For a dress made of heavy curtains, velvet of two shades of green was bought. They tried to age it to create the effect of faded fabric in places, but this was practically not visible in color shots of the 40s. However, the outfit came out really luxurious and since then is considered the main thing for this film.

White dress from the movie "The Seven Year Itch" (Marilyn Monroe, 1955)

Today historians believe that the street shooting of the frivolous scene, which attracted a crowd of thousands and attracted the attention of the press, was an extraordinary publicity stunt. He certainly succeeded: photographs of Marilyn Monroe in a dress fluttering from the warm wind from the subway really became so popular that this image, 65 years later, is described as one of the most iconic for the 20th century. By the way, the actress paid very dearly for the photo session - after the hype around the photos that were daring for that time, her marriage to baseball player Joe DiMaggio broke up. The most famous dress was kept in the Hollywood Film Museum for a long time, until it was auctioned for $ 5.5 million in 2011.

Black Dress from Breakfast at Tiffany's (Audrey Hepburn, 1961)

The episode, in which the heroine stands at a shop window in a luxurious black dress, is considered one of the most stylish and spectacular in the history of cinematography. The Givenchy outfit has become iconic. Although the famous couturier borrowed the idea from Coco Chanel, in his interpretation it looks incredibly expensive and luxurious. Not surprisingly, one of the copies of this masterpiece was sold in 2006 at an auction in London to an anonymous buyer for 900 thousand dollars.

Two Dresses from Pretty Woman (Julia Roberts, 1990)

For exactly thirty years now, this outfit has been considered the standard of chic and elegance. It is surprising that, according to the creators of the film, the heroine of Julia Roberts was supposed to shine in the opera in black - they wanted to emphasize the change in her image as much as possible, because the "lady of the half-light" was supposed to turn into a real princess for one evening. Artist Marilyn Vance had to endure a real fight, lagging behind her flamboyant vision of the scene. She sifted through many shades of red for testing and sewed as many as three dresses, one of which still won the battle.

Horse racing is a very demanding event where you need to look perfect and modest at the same time. For this release, dresser Marilyn Vance created an outfit that became a model of laconic chic for her time. The simple brown polka-dot dress was initially planned to be long, but then, since this is a morning exit, they decided to shorten it to the knee. Marilyn searched for a suitable fabric herself, not finding anywhere a sufficiently noble and expensive option. Finally, brown silk was found in one of the shops in Beverly Hills. Until now, this outfit with a hat and gloves serves as a standard for fashionistas.

Indecent Proposal (Demi Moore, 1993)

It was because of this dress that all the fuss with the "purchase" of the beauty and her departure from her husband played out in the plot of the film. We must pay tribute to the costume designers, Demi Moore in the masterpiece from Thierry Mugler really was worthy to start wars and collapse of empires because of her. After the release of the film, America was swept by a wave of fashion for black dresses with crossed straps. True, not all variations on this theme looked as gorgeous, but the desire to copy movie heroes is one of the engines of modern commerce.

Basic Instinct (Sharon Stone, 1992)

Famous designer Nino Cerutti and costume designer Ellen Mirozhnik became the authors of the outfit in which Sharon Stone shocked the audience of the 90s. It is surprising that one of the most erotic scenes of modern cinema was played in an almost closed and seemingly modest outfit. This was the idea of the creators: contrast and emphasis on the heroine's legs - in creative laboratories, as you know, there are no trifles. A side effect of the film's overwhelming success was the return of stand-up collars to fashion, which have never lost their relevance ever since.

Atonement (Keira Knightley, 2007)

The film itself has become less popular than the green dress in the style of the 20s, which is recognized as the most successful outfit in the history of cinema. I must say that Keira Knightley does not differ in curvaceous forms, which, however, does not prevent her from constantly acting in historical films. Without going into the details of the fashion of past centuries and historical accuracy, it should be noted that the costume designer Jacqueline Durran in this case really fulfilled the task set before her: she created a retro dress that looks like an outfit of her era, but at the same time "does not smell like mothballs." … The flying silhouette and bare back have been leading the red carpet ever since. In order for the fabric to look new in different lighting conditions, several copies of the outfit were created from fabric of similar shades of green.

One of the most famous dresses in recent years is the £ 200,000 wedding dress that Meghan Markle used to bring Prince Harry to tears.