Costume Analysis:

Our costumes for Breaking the Lens are largely an extension of the project’s overarching perspective of women in horror films as complex, multidimensional, and heroic figures. We used various techniques, ranging from traditional sewing and pattern drafting to experimental and avant-garde craftsmanship. Details in costuming subvert themes, aesthetics, and common tropes presented in each film. Specifically, beading, body sculpture, and recurring technical aspects explore elements of horror, such as cinematic shock, sexploitation, voyeurism, and victimhood. The costumes also embrace and question traditional studies of horror cinema, such as the portrayal of women as lacking agency. These costumes explore women as reclaiming their victimhood, becoming nightmarish symbols of heroism.

 

Jaws

Our exploration of Jaws is centered around Chrissie, the shark’s first victim. This costume emblemizes the moral conventions that encompass Chrissie’s death. Chrissie’s ghost first appears as a veiled figure, who later exercises her own agency and unveils her body. The veil represents the complex layers of shame and guilt that are placed on Chissie for skinny-dipping. In this way, we hope to communicate how the character acts as the ultimate warning sign.

This piece’s wearable art is inspired by common underwater elements, such as beach debris, snorkelling gear, and marine gardens. These elements are made beautiful and placed over a structural canvas which resembles shark bone, creating a distorted reinterpretation of beach imagery. The “shark bone” is also decorated with artisanal shark teeth that dig into Chrissie’s torso. This decision was inspired by Susan Backlinie’s rib injury on the original set of Jaws while performing Chrissie’s death scene. In this way, the costume deconstructs Chrissie’s role, gathering symbols of her death and converting them into material language. With her body being mauled by a shark after performing the unchaste act of skinny dipping, Chrissie’s death epitomizes the trope of sexual immorality in horror. Through our costume analysis, we hope to iconize this trope, giving agency and dimension to sexually liberated characters, like Chrissie. Our wearable art, once unveiled, showcases Chrissie’s death as a noble reclaiming of victimhood, and not just a gimmick for cinematic shock.

 

Rear Window

Our Rear Window costume explores examples of autonomy in female-driven horror. We are particularly interested in representations of power and self-agency as masculinizing agents, while acknowledging the historical context of Rear Window’s original screening. The film is a fascinating example of female characters, in this case, Lisa Freemont, as glorified risk-takers who also reinforce traditional gender stereotypes. This is seen in Lisa’s obsession with defining herself as being more than Jeffries’ caricature of femininity. Despite her love of fashion and beauty culture, she easily shifts her identity to align with a modest, more masculine archetype of strong womanhood. We blended elements from both Lisa and Jeffries’ personas to define the film’s perspective on gender. The camerahead represents Jeffries’ sense of exploration and need to independently solve the film’s murder. The dress, flipped inside-out, expresses Lisa’s need to take risks and redefine herself as a multidimensional character. The costume is physically distressed, evoking a sense of self-exploration and deconstruction. Through dress and wearable art, this piece distorts femininity in Rear Window, inviting audiences to reflect on their self-constructed gender ideals and their own internalising windows.

 

The Fly

With this costume, we were interested in satirizing and deconstructing the elements of transformation, anthropomorphosis, and gender presented in The Fly. Similar to our Rear Window design, we blended elements of the film’s male and female leads. We dressed the character in a darker version of Helene’s signature walking suits, with bug wing epaulets and peplums peeking through beaded seams. The character is crowned with a bejeweled fly headpiece, incorporating decorative beading and hand crafting techniques. These pieces act as a reminder of Andre’s swiftly changing body, demonstrating the film’s focus on transmogrification and anthropomorphism. However, the character’s human attributes are directly influenced by Helene. The Fly is unique for its inclusion of Helene as a victim, hero, and villain. Throughout the film she is brutally interrogated by police, destroys her husband’s human body, and makes every attempt to shield her family from death and controversy. This costume is also a reaction to transformation, cataloguing the physical, theatrical, and social changes in The Fly.

 

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

We found The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to be an extraordinarily difficult film to watch. It forces audiences to engage with a grotesque, torture-exploitative, almost apocalyptic distortion of Americana. While creating this costume design, we were fascinated and horrified by Sally’s journey through this slaughter-house wonderland. Our aim with this piece is to replicate and respond to Sally’s emotional, adrenaline-charged escape from Leatherface and his cannibalistic family. We were directly influenced by the film’s colour palette, a mixture of soft yellows and purples with starkly contrasting red tones. Our character is tangled in a dress with an inverted crinoline made of vein-like wires and branches, referencing Sally’s entrapment in a forest. The wearable art components of this costume were made using a blend of quilting and sculpture techniques, adorned with metallic trim and alternative structural elements. Our version of Leatherface’s mask explores Carol Clover’s Final Girl theory. In our design, the unity of dress and mask communicates how Sally, as the glorified Final Girl, escapes her fate by wearing Leatherface’s mask, embodying the same chaotic and fearsome energy as her tormentor. This costume eulogizes the Final Girl trope, and asks audiences why most female characters in horror films must become their own nightmare in order to escape from it.

 

The Usher:

While guiding the audience through The Terrible Tour, our Usher character goes through tonal shifts and personal growth as they encounter the abandoned ghosts of female horror characters. We were challenged to curate a costume that signals this emotional change, while also expressing elements of surprise. Throughout most of the performance, the Usher struggles to relay the sexist commentary provided in their tour guide script. They enter wearing an ill-fitting male usher jacket, which represents all of the traditional, sexist tropes of women in horror. Just as these tropes no longer resonate with today’s film culture, the Usher’s jacket does not suit their identity or even physically fit their body. In this way, the Usher’s jacket represents old patriarchal ideas.

Our production ends with the Usher’s bittersweet eulogy to the ghosts. As the Usher gets more frustrated with the fate of women in horror, they rip off their jacket, revealing a surprise jacket underneath. This new uniform is made of bits and pieces from the ghosts’ costumes, which are tailored through reverse applique and exposed seams. The coat is also embellished with growth-like beading, which is made to look as if these shiny new ideas are growing like fungi on the Usher’s jacket. Specifically, the exposed seaming of this coat represents the beauty of works in process, much like the Usher’s developing thought-process throughout the performance. The under-jacket visually signals that the Usher has finally exercised their own agency, embracing their new perspective on female horror tropes. And unifying them with the ghosts.