The veteran Australian costume designer Wendy Cork would have been forgiven for thinking, after signing on to the highly anticipated feature film Ladies in Black, that she had found the dream gig: a lavish period drama chock-full of glamour and high fashion, based in and around a department store.
But Cork soon realised, as she explains, “that we were going to make a film based in the world of fashion, but all the lead cast would be wearing black dresses”. The challenge then became “how to create individuals and reflect their personalities through their silhouettes, their figures, their shapes”.
But not, however, in ways overtly showy or distracting: “From my point of view you should never really notice costumes,” Cork says. “If you see a costume on an actor and believe it, you believe that character and you go back to the story very quickly.
“If there’s something wrong with the visuals, you start questioning the character. Then you start questioning the story, and you kind of get lost outside the purpose of the film.”
While the director Bruce Beresford’s adaption of Madeleine St John’s novel’s The Women in Black is primarily about women, Cork became fascinated by the men in the film – particularly “the difference between what the Australian male was wearing and what the European male would wear”.
The costume designer says Australian men, one of whom is played by Shane Jacobson, “didn’t dress very well. They were more interested in a horse race, a beer, eating steaks every night and not showing their emotions. They were too scared to be different. I think we took Victorian England in our hearts for a long time without realising we were meant to get rid of it, as a young nation. I think that’s where it came from.”
Ladies in Black isn’t the first visually striking production in Cork’s oeuvre. She dressed Helen Mirren in the horror film Winchester, fitted Sarah Snook and Ethan Hawke in a range of outfits for the time-travelling sci-fi drama Predestination, and designed the computer-generated clothes for the critically acclaimed 2011 video game LA Noire. The latter is a detective story based in Los Angeles in the 1940s, a period Cork is “absolutely obsessed with. The 1940s in Los Angeles was quite fantastic”.
Cork belongs to a long and storied group of Australian costume designers who have had a big influence locally and abroad. Here are a handful of other high-profile costume designers who have achieved international acclaim.
Orry-Kelly
The subject of a 2015 documentary by the director Gillian Armstrong, Women He’s Undressed, Orry-Kelly was a prolific designer and Hollywood legend who won three Academy Awards. The hundreds of films to have received the Orry-Kelly touch include Casablanca, Some Like it Hot, 42nd Street, Gold Diggers of 1937, The Maltese Falcon and Oklahoma! The actors he designed for include Marilyn Monroe and Bette Davis.
Catherine Martin
A longtime collaborator of Baz Luhrmann (to whom she is married), Catherine Martin has won more Oscars than any other Australian in history. Known for extravagantly colourful outfits, including Kylie Minogue’s glorious “green fairy” costume, Martin won two Oscars for The Great Gatsby (costume design and production design) and two for Moulin Rouge! (costume design and art direction-set direction).
Norma Moriceau
The director Phillip Noyce once called Norma Moriceau Australia’s greatest costume designer, describing her pithily: “She created icons.” Among many films, Moriceau designed Paul Hogan’s unforgettable safari-like look for Crocodile Dundee and the stunning, post-apocalyptic, BDSM-esque outfits for The Road Warrior and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. For the Mad Max franchise’s third sequel, Mad Max: Fury Road, another Australian costume designer took over – the esteemed two-time Oscar-winner Jenny Beavan.
Janet Patterson
Janet Patterson’s specialty was conveying character through costume design in period dramas. In this arena, the four-time Oscar nominee was one of the best in the world. She worked with Jane Campion on The Piano, Bright Star and Portrait of a Lady, Gillian Armstrong on The Last Days of Chez Nous and Oscar and Lucinda, and Thomas Vinterberg on Far from the Madding Crowd.
Lizzy Gardiner and Tim Chappel
Costumes don’t get much more extravagant than the weird and wonderful outfits created for the writer/director Stephan Elliott’s fabulously queer classic The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Elliott’s film resulted in Academy Awards for costume designers Lizzy Gardiner and Tim Chappel, whose outfits (constructed on a small budget) included an emu-inspired headpiece and a mini-dress made of thongs bought from Target. Gardiner’s later films include Swinging Safari and Hacksaw Ridge, and Chappel’s include The Dressmaker and Mental.
Michael Wilkinson
Michael Wilkinson’s specialty is big-budget Hollywood spectacles. He has dressed a wide array of characters, working on blockbusters including Justice League, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Noah, Man of Steel, Tron: Legacy, Terminator Salvation, Watchmen and two Twilight films. He received an Academy Award nomination for 2013’s American Hustle.
