“Designing Woman was a designer’s dream come true”, film costume designer Helen Rose said in an interview. They say that the idea for the film came from the MGM head costume designer, but it was in fact based on Woman of the Year and everyone who saw the movie starring Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy can tell this. Helen Rose must have adapted it to take part in the fashion world. Lauren Bacall is Marilla Brown, a successful fashion designer, and Gregory Peck is Mike Hagen, a sports writer. They meet in California while on vacation, fall in love and hastily get married. Returning to New York, to real life is a real challenge for the newlyweds. They realise their lifestyles are worlds apart and all kinds of comical matrimonial problems arise.
According to Helen Rose, “Lauren Bacall has a perfect figure for clothes and a genuine feeling for them.” Bacall started out in modelling and appeared on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar in March 1943, which caught the eye of Howard Hawks’ wife, Nancy, who suggested that Bacall should be screen-tested. She was then cast in To Have and Have Not (1944), alongside Humphrey Bogart. The rest, as they say, is film history.
She wears about thirty changes throughout Designing Woman (1957) and they range from a yellow bathing suit to a glamorous mink dress and a striped long skirt paired with a billowy sleeved sheer blouse. The film was a perfect occasion for Helen Rose to show her tremendous range, great style and skill.
The clothes she wears on vacation are very different from the ones she normally wears as a career woman, fact noticed by Mike as well on the plane on their way to New York when Marilla changes into her work clothes (image below): “the first one in a series of wardrobe changes that never failed to amaze me”. Polished and impeccably tailored, with a clean, classic line and in a wide range of colours (Helen Rose knew how to use colour), from black and navy to red, green and orange, they fit perfectly and are very functional too, one other detail that Helen paid great attention to. Because the garments have to look great not only when she stands still, but when she walks across a room or after she sits down on the floor sketching. Marilla wears her high style city clothes with as much ease as when she wears her holiday wardrobe. She looks comfortable whatever her attire.
There is one sequence in the film when a choreographer of a dance show Marilla is designing the costumes for explains her how the gowns must move with the performer. It is obvious that this is Helen Rose’s own voice: clothes in general have to move with the woman. She never lost sight of this aspect, not even with the most glamorous outfits she designed.
There is also a fashion show in the film. Although I’m not including photos here, I would like to share a very funny description of Mike’s when he attends his wife’s presentation: “Have you ever been to a fashion show? It’s a sort of a pagan ritual, a ceremonial dance where the faithful sit around sipping tee and worshipping clothes. There is a sacrifice involved too: $1,500 for a dress, $350 for a nightie. So help me! The high priestess of this slaughter was my Marilla.”
Helen Rose knew very well that each and every actress was different in personality and figure and she knew how to bring out the very best in everyone, but by emphasising the woman, not the clothes. “I don’t think clothes make the woman. I’m a firm believer that women make the clothes. To me, a woman should be like a beautiful jewel and the clothes just a setting, our background. Chic, styled, flattering, but basically simple.”
photos: screen stills, Classiq Journal. Credit: MGM
editorial sources: an interview with Helen Rose on the DVD edition released by Turner Home Entertainment
, it’s just so iconic and designers constantly reference it. Catherine Deneuve movies and YSL are inextricably linked for a lot of people, myself included. I think girls are always trying to dress like their favorite movies, whether it’s an Audrey Hepburn or Marilyn Monroe or a more obscure film. I remember trying to emulate Diane Keaton’s look as a teen, which now that I think about it must’ve seemed kind of strange. Then I fell for the kitten heels in 
, followed by the glamorous clothes in 
— films I saw in college when I was 17 and 18 years old. In my early 20s I was smitten with the French New Wave, it’s pretty much the reason I applied to film school and once there I tried to dress like Anna Karina in 
, lol. Even now, they’re saying the Jason Wu line at Target is inspired by the French New Wave, so it’s definitely had an impact. I think the cool thing about film and fashion is that you can draw from any period depending on how you’re feeling.
, which are really Part 2 and Part 1 of the same story: a small town guy heads out to make it big and finds out that the glamorous life doesn’t fulfill him. It’s a universal version of the tragic American dream, and there’s scenes in both those movies that still make me weep. To me, that’s good filmmaking.
