MovieChat Forums > The Women (1939) Discussion > Did you Hate Every Stitch of Clothing in...

Did you Hate Every Stitch of Clothing in the Fashion Show?


Adrian certainly did a magnificent job costuming his women but... that fashion show in which he gets to 'cut loose and play avant garde designer' is 100% AWFUL.

reply

Does anyone know which specific stages at MGM The Women was shot in?

reply

There's a white and red evening gown, as the models are shown leaving a play, that I absolutely love, but yes, a great deal of those items were decidedly overblown.

- -
Truth is a hard master, and costly to serve, but it simplifies every problem.

reply

That white/red evening dress was my favorite.


"Who's running this airline?!"

reply

I agree, the most memorable was the red and white evening dress that ends up being worn by Princess Mara when the film switches back to B&W.

reply

There was a blue dress I thought was pretty. But the hats were abominable.

reply

I believe that fashions are drop dead gorgeous and display what was shown and worn by gentile women of the time. Much better than the nonsense shown at shows these days that are completely unwearable!

reply

Gentile??? I do think you mean genteel.

reply

What was the point of that scene, which seemed to go on forever? It felt like a commercial.

reply

I think it was a gimmick to showcase Technicolor which was somewhat of a novelty at the time. That sequence has always felt forced and weird to me. It just didn't fit into a straight comedy drama. Apparently George Cukor didn't like it either.

reply

Yes, most of it was awful, like it belonged in a previous century, but only in some ways.

reply

I also liked the red and white gown, and several of the tennis outfits and the red and green-and-white suits at the monkey house were OK.

But most were, as my mother taught me to say politely, not to my taste. 

And the cape with the fake hand was the stuff of nightmares.

reply

It seems to have been a brief dalliance with surrealism -note also Rosalind Russell's shirt with the eyes on it.

reply

It seems to have been a brief dalliance with surrealism -note also Rosalind Russell's shirt with the eyes on it.


Had there been more scenes in the film, who knows what other surrealist images and/or or body parts we might have seen! Perhaps livers and spleens (or, in keeping with the film's theme, uteri) draped over a landscape, like Dali's clocks?

Ick. I just grossed myself out.

But I have a sudden urge to watch this film as a double feature with Spellbound . . .

reply

I normally don't pay that much attention to what they're wearing in black-and-white movies but damn did that weird eye shirt stand out. Not a fan at all.

reply

[deleted]

I've rarely seen anything at a fashion show, in any time period, that anyone would actually wear.

reply