Designing Hollywood by Christian Esquevin
For actors, costumes can be their second skin. This was never truer than in golden age Hollywood, where studios employed costume designers and entire wardrobe staffs to wrap the stars in glorious gowns. Even clothing worn by everyday characters in impoverished settings was given careful consideration for its effect on the imagination of viewers.
Christian Esquevin has authored what might be the first book-length study of costume designs from all the major studios. His Designing Hollywood is organized with chapters for each of the big studios that emerged by 1930: Universal, 20th Century-Fox, Paramount, Warner Bros., M-G-M, Columbia and RKO. Each chapter chronicles the major designers, the stars they clad and the movies that showcased their work. Sometimes studios relied on renting clothing from Western Costume, a firm still in business today.
The clothes of the stars influenced fashion trends, and in circular motion, fashion helped determine the look of the stars. Some of the designers in Esquevin’s book are familiar to film buffs, especially Edith Head and Oleg Cassini. However, most of the names he cites are little known, making Designing Hollywood a resource for historians. Esquevin brings his account past Hollywood’s golden age and into the early ‘70s. By then the studios, if they survived at all, were just names on the Monopoly board of transnational corporations. “Fortunately, Warner Bros., despite many changes of ownership over the years, has maintained the bulk of its vintage wardrobe collection,” the author notes approvingly.
Designing Hollywood is a beautifully designed with high quality photo reproduction and attractive fonts as well as full-color reproductions of costume sketches. Designing Hollywood is published by University Press of Kentucky.
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