Rouge: I invite my fellow Chicks to contribute to this one, favourite film costumes! A work in progress if there ever was, I’ll be updating this over the course of… a long while.
If I were to choose the single most titillating and arousing film costume, my mind doesn’t run towards Ursula Andress’ white bathing suit in Dr. No or Barbarella’s space suit in … well Barbaralla. Less is more, and the less we see the more our imagination runs wild. In Von Sternberg’s Morocco (1930), Marlene Dietrich is a stage performer who has arrived to make a new life for herself. It’s made clear to her that making it on the stage in Morocco is like finding a needle in a haystack, usually within a month those who arrive on the boat are never seen again.
When Dietrich emerges onstage dressed in a tailored man’s suit, the audience is already booing. Performers have to fight from the bottom up to make a success, and Dietrich makes it seem effortless. What people often forget about costumes, is that the suit is only as good as the person who wears it. This is not a case of simply looking good, but inhibiting what the clothing suggests. Dietrich’s indifferent sexuality, and gender ambiguity are played up to maximum effect as she performs her song parodying he other sex. She oozes a laissez-faire attitude, while simultaneously having every man and woman pining on her every word and action. In the film’s most notorious moment, she flirts with one of the society women before embracing her tenderly.
The costume is integrated as being an essential to the scene, and it’s because of this that the costume becomes so ingrained into popular consciousness. I also have to wonder, if any other actress could have pulled if off quite as well as Dietrich. Not only because audiences would have been aware that she was a bisexual, but her attitude and relative calmness that leaves us all clamouring for more. As good as the costume may be, if the figure inside is bland it’s never worth remembering. It takes that added Ooomph! to pull if off.
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