I Want More Costume Accuracy in Films!

24 May 2024

By Anna Bloomfield

I Want More Costume Accuracy in Films!

There is a big community of historical costume enthusiasts, seamstresses, movie-buffs, re-enactors, and experts who desire accurate and beautiful costuming in their Hollywood films. I am one of those enthusiasts. I love historical fashion and wear it on a daily basis. There's nothing I love more than a film that "does it well".

While design choices are expected, films which totally ignore the historical record are often seen as disgraces to this big community.

Costume inaccuracies are not unforgivable provided they serve the story or specific aesthetic the director is going for. Bernadette Banner, a YouTuber, professional historical seamstress and historical fashion enthusiast, has banded annually with others in her community to rank the historical accuracy of films from the year. I love watching these annual videos and seeing if I can guess the inaccuracies they will point out. Her highest rank includes films that carefully consulted available research, creating a very believable hypothesis of what these periods would have looked like. Her lowest ranks include films that ignored the record without reason. Every year, the majority end up in the bottom half of the roster. 

Banner admits accurate historical costume is a myth. Even professional historical reenactors who obsessively dedicate themselves to recreating a single person never truly feel satisfied they have become living history. Banner also caveats a production’s accuracy is not synonymous with its overall quality. 

Indeed, historical accuracy is clearly not at the heart of what the film community considers good costuming. Looking at the winners of the Academy Award for Best Costume Design, artistry is overwhelmingly more important. In 2006, the winner was Marie Antionette – a movie which took liberties with its costuming. Parallelly, Emma (2020) which is generally agreed in the costume community to have near-flawless recreation of Regency dress with clear reproductions of surviving artifacts did not win. Regardless, audiences still see historical accuracy as valuable. 

Big production companies frequently ignore the historical record to aesthetically please modern western audiences. This is not a valid reason for excluding accuracy.

Accuracy is especially in demand for non-European set historical films. From the time of eighteenth-century theatre, depictions of Chinese, Ottoman, African, Indian, and Native American characters were costumed in an exotic and stereotyped manner to appeal to the eyes of the intended audience. Costume designer Marisa Lujan has commented greatly on the presence of stereotyped costume in productions, prescribing costume designers to combat the marginalization of racial and ethnic identities by ‘doing the proper research and not defaulting to previous ideas and depictions’. She advocates chasing more accurate costumes and making it so audiences can recognise them. There are many who watch period dramas seeking to learn about these historical periods. It is important to challenge depictions of Chinese and Japanese people with dragon adorned silk robes and of Middle Eastern people with ‘harem pants and large turbans’. 

Accurate costume to this effect appears in The Woman King (2022) – a movie intended to circulate pride in black heritage. The Agojie warriors were a real group in 1820s Dahomey (West Africa). Expert Cheyney McKnight comments on this film, observing the clear time and effort put into the clothing. She commends its accurate depictions of diverse African ethnic groups, each with different clothing and hairstyles. The warrior women are done exceptionally well: the strip woven fabric of their tunics is perfect. The use of cowrie shells for hair and clothing decoration on high status characters is appropriate as they were used as currency in this period. This African costuming employs deliberate accuracy, aiding the central message of the film. The European clothes are inaccurate as their heritage is not the focus of the story. Historical accuracy is powerful. It matters. Films should use it to serve their artistic messages. 

Exemplifying the consequences of films totally abandoning historical accuracy is Hollywood’s abominable portrayal of corsetry. Corsets were effectively bra and spanx, supporting the back and distributing the breasts’ weight across the body. They were a normal article of clothing and should be remembered as such. I myself own a pair of stays – an earlier version of the corset which I wear and move in without hassle. Despite this, they have been misrepresented, warped, and exploited in films, creating a series of misconceptions.

The corset has been sexualised in films as tightlacing “torture porn”. Historical women are sexualised by films for entertainment value through the epidemic of ‘clinging to bedpost scenes’ depicting moaning in suggestive positions due to forceful tightlacing. This trope is seen with such perfect repetition, audiences have accepted it as historical truth. Films should take their responsibility seriously.

The trope appears in films from Gone with the Wind (1939) to Cinderella (2015). Corsets have been stereotyped as ‘symbols of patriarchy’, used as shorthand to symbolise a woman being restricted not just in her dress but in life. Such a tightlacing scene in Titanic (1997) displays all classic corset torture tropes of wincing while she holds her bedpost, as well as including a corset from the wrong era. An older woman tightlaces an unwilling younger woman as part of a ritual of social pressure to appeal to men. Though this scene demonstrates a relevant coercive dynamic between Rose and her mother, there were many other ways it could have been expressed.

Karolina Zebrowska, another YouTuber and historical clothing enthusiast, and numerous others have expressed irritation at the mistreatment of corsets in media through “lazy writing”.

Corset misconceptions trace to Victorian men. In the time when women were fighting for Suffrage, criticism was a way of attacking their power. The fashion industry was overrun with women workers and fashion house ‘Madames’. They designed and sewed corsets, making them a symbol of ‘women’s pride and independence’. Men were quick to ridicule their work: doctors sparked ‘anti-corset mania’ through unsubstantiated studies claiming corsets lead to tuberculosis, cancer, and even bad behaviour.

Previously with Victorian men, and currently with male filmmakers, truth has been ‘misconstrued and decided upon by people who do not have women’s best interest in mind’. Filmmakers turned corsets into a plot device to disempower female characters. Historical accuracy should never have been abandoned in this way. I want more costume accuracy in my films! Down with bad corset depictions! Give me more artifact reproductions!