Clothes Make the Movie : The New Edith Heads of Hollywood

THEY SPEND MORE TIME looking through fashion magazines and history books than sketching. They devote hours to shopping at Bullock’s, Saks Fifth Avenue and Western Costume. They scour garage sales and downtown clothing shops in search of the perfect icon of an era. These scavengers of style are the new breed of costume designers, the new Edith Heads of Hollywood.

Head, who lavishly costumed more than 1,000 films for Paramount and Universal and won eight Academy Awards, began her career in the 1920s and worked until her death in 1981. During her heyday, the ‘30s and ‘40s, quality workmanship was affordable, and fashion trends, such as padded shoulders, were born on the screen. Today, independent costume designers are limited by labor costs and movie realism. Often, rather than create original garments, they opt to adapt what they buy off the rack.

But the glamour isn’t lost. Costume design is still a business played out under the spotlight. Working with the world’s top actors and directors, the new designers wield the creative power to shape, via costume, today’s box-office hits. Most of the designers featured here have been nominated for Academy Awards, but none has won. Yet.

AGGIE GUERARD RODGERS

As a teen-ager, Aggie Guerard Rodgers lived the San Joaquin Valley life that George Lucas captured in his 1973 film, “American Graffiti.” So it made sense that she landed the costume designer’s job. Besides, no one else would work within Lucas’ skimpy $4,000 budget.

The film’s madras shirts and pleated skirts were an auspicious start for Rodgers, who is now 46 and has a master’s degree in costume design from Cal State Long Beach. She went on to bigger films, including “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” the Best Picture of 1975, “The Return of the Jedi,” which had a costume budget of $800,000, and “The Color Purple,” for which she earned her first Academy Award nomination.

For “Beetlejuice,” Rodgers stretched her imagination to dress Michael Keaton who, as a demon wandering hell and earth, appears in a wild black-and-white suit. One scene called for Keaton’s arms to turn into hammers and his head to become a carousel, so Rodgers worked with technicians to fit mechanical devices inside the garment. Special effects also required Rodgers to carefully design the pajamas worn by Cher, Susan Sarandon and Michelle Pfeiffer in “The Witches of Eastwick.” Cut-away duplicates had to accommodate harnesses used during flight scenes.

In all of her projects, Rodgers uses a piece of her late mother’s wardrobe. For “I Love You to Death,” which opens soon, she included her mother’s jewelry in a dinner scene. Says Rodgers: “I’m very sentimental.”

DEBORAH NADOOLMAN

Deborah Nadoolman, who cut her teeth on television costume design, scrounged up black Ray-Ban shades for Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi in the 1980 film “The Blues Brothers,” and a Wayfarer trend was born. In 1981, she outfitted Harrison Ford in his battered flight jacket and fedora for “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” And in 1982, she created the red-and-black leather jacket for Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video. It’s no coincidence that safari gear and the leather look have been popular ever since.

“I’ve had tremendous luck,” says the 37-year-old wife of director John Landis. “The clothes I’ve designed have gone on to become part of the popular culture.” Last year, the jacket that Nadoolman distressed by hand with a wire brush for “Raiders” earned a place in the entertainment collection of the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of American History.

More recently, Nadoolman, who holds a master’s degree in costume design from UCLA, worked on Eddie Murphy’s “Coming to America.” For the modern fairy tale, she fashioned what she calls the “African ascot” look, combining ethnic motifs and ‘50s couture silhouettes. “The goal was to establish the enormity of Zamunda’s wealth,” she says of the fictitious country. The result was a tuxedo topped by an ocelot skin, complete with cubic zirconium eyes; crown jewels of real pearls, semiprecious stones and paste diamonds--and Nadoolman’s first Academy Award nomination.

MARILYN VANCE-STRAKER

Marilyn Vance-Straker, 42, is known as a modern-day costume designer because many of her films, such as “The Breakfast Club,” “Die Hard” and “Uncle Buck,” take place in the undefined present. The contemporary stories pose problems that period pieces don’t. Because most wardrobes are designed at least 18 months before the film is released, “you have to anticipate trends or avoid them because otherwise the film looks dated,” she explains.

Quick problem-solving is Vance-Straker’s forte, so she was disappointed but prepared when disaster struck Brian De Palma’s “The Untouchables.” “After the longest wait, we got the suits from Giorgio Armani in Italy--$200,000 worth, mind you--and then we spent the next 72 days remaking every inch,” she recalls. “The shape of the lapels, the pads in the shoulders, the pocket treatments, the sleeves, the width of the pant legs, even the lining--nothing worked.” Though Armani demanded on-screen credit, her rescue effort brought her first Academy Award nomination.

A graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York and a former sportswear designer, Vance-Straker usually works on three films a year. “Sometimes the amount of time you spend is purely determined by the bottom line,” she says. “If the producers can afford you for only two weeks, you give them all you’ve got for 14 days. You approach every film as if it’s going to be a major hit, so every film is your best effort.”

ELLEN MIROJNICK

Ellen Mirojnick is as interested in characters’ psyches as she is in their costumes. So, long before the 40-year-old designer sits down at her drawing table, she explores “how they feel about love and hate, why they feel the way they do.” Her character analysis has determined the costumes for “The Flamingo Kid,” “Cocktail,” “Talk Radio” and Steven Spielberg’s latest release, “Always.”

She has become linked to Michael Douglas, whom she has dressed in three films--not bad for someone who was thrown out of the Parsons School of Design for flunking pattern-making.To turn him into the unscrupulous Gordon Gekko in “Wall Street,” Mirojnick researched men in similar jobs and then embellished reality. Where she found classic suspenders, a plain white shirt and a simple paisley tie, she replaced them with ostentatious striped braces with white leather attachments, a notice-me blue shirt with a white collar and an I-dare-you brocade tie.

In stark contrast are the somber black wardrobes of at least two of her other films. For “Fatal Attraction,” Mirojnick designed to foreshadow Douglas’ psychological state as a cheating husband whose lover is out to kill him: “His spirits got darker and darker as the story progressed, and so did the clothes.” For “Black Rain,” Mirojnick styled clothing to emphasize Douglas’ hostility as a no-nonsense detective: “It was important that he feel like a tough guy, so I gave him tight clothes and slick textures. The leather jacket was the obvious choice.”