The Great Gatsby (2013)
Costume Designer: Catherine Martin
The Great Gatsby was directed by Baz Luhrman, the film adaptation of the F. G. Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel of the same name. The styles utilised in the costume span the entire decade, and this creates a hyper-real fantasy of high-end couture and runway fashion of the time. This creates a link to the 1920s that Fitzgerald encompasses in his novel, as he highlights the themes of money, sex, and class.
Daisy Buchanan
To aid my review, I will give a character synopsis to highlight key points for them in the film as well as their personality. Originally from Kentucky, Daisy fell in love with Gatsby while he was stationed there during the war. He lies to her about his background, saying he comes from a rich family in an attempt to secure her. They fall in love and Gatsby must leave, and Daisy promises to wait for him. In 1919, however, she chooses to marry Tom Buchanan who came from a solid, aristocratic family. He was also supported by her parents. After 1919, Gatsby dedicates himself to winning Daisy back, and amasses his fortune through criminal activity. To Gatsby, Daisy represents the paragon of perfection as she has the aura of charm, wealth, sophistication, grace, and aristocracy that he wants. In reality, she is not this. Where she is charming and intelligent, she is also fickle, shallow, and bored. Daisy is in love with money, ease, and material luxury. She is capable of affection but not of sustained loyalty or care.
Daisy's costumes throughout the piece are quite over the top. Daisy screams luxury through her wardrobe choices, and the silks, organza and other expensive fabrics used on her dresses are further proof to her life of luxury that she wants and craves. Her clothes are a statement to the conventional life she chose and reflect the money she chose over the love she claims to have once had for Gatsby. The dresses she wears throughout the film mix between the 20s silhouette and a more period look with full skirt and frills, reflecting perhaps on Daisy’s outdated views of society and her hopes to cling to a class that is dying away with the reform of society and the freeing women, such as the flappers of the 20s encompassed in the character of Jordan. One dress encompasses a 20s neckline with natural waist, and then a larger skirt than was fashionable in the 20s and is complete with ruffles and gathered overskirt, which are reminiscent of the Victorian era. Most of Daisy’s dresses too come in pastel shades, and this could symbolise daisy’s passive qualities as a dainty and rich female. Throughout the film, Daisy is never bold, even when she finds out about Tom Buchanan’s affair or when she kills Myrtle. Her dresses also are made up of layers, and this could further symbolise the layers of her life, the deceit that she has gone through in order to achieve the life she now has. A final thought on Daisy's costumes is the floral motifs throughout. This could be another reflection on Daisy’s passive and dainty nature, as she attempts to be a delicate and quintessential woman. It could also be a physical representation of the beauty that Daisy is supposed to have, as she is supposed to be the most beautiful woman in the film. My problems with Daisy’s costumes is that they don’t feel historically accurate. Although they lend well to the symbolism of her character and help draw out her hidden personality features, the costumes don’t feel right unless seen at the Buchanan mansion. When out in other scenes, Daisy feels out of place.
Jordan Baker
Jordan belongs to the upper crust of society, and even though she had moved from elsewhere to the East Coast she has quickly climbed the social ranks to become a famous golfer, which was a sport typically played by wealthy men. Jordan’s rise through society, however, is supported by lies and it is recognised that Jordan is constantly dishonest to keep the world at bay and protect herself from cruelty. Jordan’s cynical and self-centred nature marks her as one of the “new women” of the Roaring Twenties. A “new woman”, or a “flapper” were famous for flouting conventional standards of female behaviour. Flappers distinguished themselves physically by bobbing their hair, dressing in short skirts, and wearing a lot of makeup. They also listened to jazz music, smoked cigarettes, openly drank alcohol, and drove cars. Most scandalous of all, flappers were known for their casual attitudes toward sexuality. Whereas Daisy is the object of men’s fantasy and idealism, Jordan exhibits a hard-hearted pragmatism that links her more forcefully to the real world.
Throughout the film, Jordan can be seen wearing trousers and suits that became popular for the women of the 20s. She also has her hair bobbed and can be seen in more flapper styles to further heighten her character as a new woman of this decade. When Nick first meets Daisy and Jordan at the Buchanan mansion, Jordan can be seen wearing a drop-waist, V-neck blouse decorated with an art deco surface pattern in silk and a pair of wide legged silk trousers. They are both in a warm toned cream and brown, and they lend themselves to the look of the new woman well. This costume represents Jordan so well, as she is able to have the life she is living due to her being able to rise in society as women are seen slightly more as equal and are able to claim some power. Her costumes are the antithesis of Daisy's dresses, and it eloquently shows the difference that the two women have. One lives the conventional lifestyle of a wife and mother, while the other lives the “new woman” lifestyle of the 1920s.
Personally, I do not think that Jordan’s black evening gown that she wears to Gatsby’s party is a successful costume. To start, the dress is of plain black silk with a beaded neck-piece and floor length skirt. The dress also has a beaded belt to break up the black dress. Although I can see why Martin chose to make this dress for Jordan, as it creates the alluring and mysterious qualities that Nick falls in love with, I do not think it is successful in representing the other parts of Jordan’s personality that are more important to the film. To begin, the dress is not historically accurate, the strapless dress was not something seen in the 1920s, although thin straps were beginning to be seen, the idea od strapless was not yet in main-stream fashion. The dress, with its art deco neck-beading, looks too modern to be believable to the audience. In this scene, too, Jordan is surrounded by women in historically accurate costumes, complete with flapper fringe, drop waist dresses and the box-shapes gowns that were popular through the 1920s. Although the beading on the neckline does follow an art deco pattern, it still looks very modern and not entirely of its time. I can understand wanting to portray Jordan as alluring, sensual and mysterious in order to give her character depth, but it shuns her other more accurate historical flapper traits in favour of modern Hollywood ones for entertainment.
Myrtle Wilson
Myrtle Wilson desperately seeks a better life than the one she has. She feels imprisoned in her marriage to George, a downtrodden and uninspiring man who she mistakenly believed had good “breeding.” Myrtle and George live together in a ramshackle garage in the squalid “valley of ashes,” a pocket of working-class desperation situated midway between New York and the suburbs of East and West Egg. Myrtle attempts to escape her social position by becoming a mistress to the wealthy Tom Buchanan, who buys her gifts and rents her an apartment in Manhattan, where Myrtle play-acts an upper-class lifestyle of dressing up and throwing parties, Myrtle seems to believe Tom genuinely loves her, and would marry her if only Daisy would divorce him.
Myrtle’s day dress encompasses parts of 1920s fashion pieces but is overall not a fully accurate 1920s dress. The dropped waist and short skirt does link in with the fashion of the time, but the bodice of the dress does not. The open ruffle to reveal the corset underneath is not part of 1920s fashion, mostly due to the fact that women remained covered in the chest area and opted for square necklines that were still quite high. Also, upon researching undergarments I found that the corset was no longer fashionable, and instead the true female form, however that may come, was very much in and women revelled in the feeling of being naked under their clothes. Perhaps by having Myrtle wearing a corset as part of her dress, it links to her inability to follow the current fashion trends as she does not have the correct money to facilitate wardrobe changes and the procuring of relevant pieces. The use of the scarlet red is an obvious link to her sexual promiscuity, as she is having an affair with Tom Buchanan behind her husband’s back. She is an openly sexual being, and her costume reflects this through colour choice as well as structure of being able to see the corset underneath. From a historical standpoint, however, this isn’t entirely accurate.
Myrtle’s party dress is more in-keeping with the time but has the silhouette of a very late Edwardian dress with flowing skirt and train. It is almost as if an Edwardian dress has been brought into the 1920s, and I think this again harks towards Myrtle’s inability to afford current luxury clothing. She must update what she already has, and work with what she can afford to look as fashionable as possible. The ruffles on the skirt are a 1920s design and could link to the “new woman” and the open sexuality that came with this way of thinking and living. The darker shade of red leans more towards the idea of being alluring and lustful, rather than the bright red that has more of a connotation of cheap promiscuity and sex. Though Myrtle never shakes her theme of sexual freedom and infidelity, she becomes classier with it in her party dress. The neckline, once again, is slightly more modern than perhaps the 1920s, but goes with the dress overall. Even though it is not entirely historically accurate, this dress is one of my favourites because it encapsulates ALL of Myrtle’s personality and tries to be historically accurate in some ways. Unlike Jordan’s black party dress, which only showed one aspect of her personality that for me wasn’t important, Myrtle’s party dress shows her entire personality while having connotations and background more than just a certain aspect.
Conclusion
Overall, I do think that the costumes of The Great Gatsby are successful in creating a hyper-real sense of fashion from the 1920s, as some of the costumes just seem too modern or stray too far from the original 1920s fashion sketches and plates. Where for some characters it is excusable as it furthers the character e.g. Daisy and Myrtle, it hinders some characters by reflecting on one part of their personality, Jordan. The costumes however do aid in inflating the personalities on screen and allowing the audience to really soak up each character and their thoughts and feelings. In conclusion, the costumes aren’t a success, as more could have been done to make them more accurate and help the 1920s come through for everyone, not just certain characters when their personalities matches the time the film was set in. I think as well due to the social climate of the 1920s that The Great Gatsby is set in, it was important to try and encapsulate as much of the clothing and scenery and really embed the audience in the 20s so that we feel as though we understand it and almost were there. The costumes were too modern to do this, and so for me the film was held back.
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