The Perfect Dress for Making a Statement
CloseLinkedinDiggMixxMySpaceYahoo! BuzzPermalink “MADE in Dagenham” is not remotely what you would call a fashion film. Set in 1968, in an automobile factory outside London, it is a dramatized account of the landmark labor dispute between the Ford Motor Company and a group of female sewing machinists who demanded equal pay with men. Archival footage from this period does not suggest the actual participants in the action were the style icons of their day.
Sally Hawkins, in red dress,,Chinese Tiger Patchwork Toy, in “Made in Dagenham.”
And yet,,Chinese kites, clothing plays a substantial role in the telling of the film, opening in limited release on Nov. 19.,chinese tea wholesalers, Along with the fine cast of Sally Hawkins, Geraldine James, Rupert Graves and Bob Hoskins, there could just as well have been a starring credit for a particular red dress by the Biba designer Barbara Hulanicki. It is used as a narrative device and worn by two characters.
“You can tell quite a lot about someone by how they dress — if they are artistic, if they are interested in fashion, or if they are not,” said Louise Stjernsward, the costume designer. “But I wasn’t setting out for this to be a fashion film. I was trying to make it look credible, because it is a real story.”
Many of the factory workers are represented in simple shirtwaist dresses and blouses, though some of the older women are dressed in 1950s fashions and one of the youngest wears Mary Quant hot pants while on strike. The employee selected to lead the workers, Rita O’Grady (Ms. Hawkins), appears at first to have the style of a mouse. But as her self-confidence develops, she begins to dress more assertively, and borrows a sharp red Biba dress with white buttons for a meeting with Barbara Castle, a member of Harold Wilson’s cabinet played by Miranda Richardson. (The dress was actually a copy Ms. Stjernsward had made for the film.)
In 1960s London Biba was an incredibly popular shop that catered to stylish young women with inexpensive versions of the current crazes — miniskirts and fun dresses with tight-cut sleeves — and in some ways became a symbol of women’s empowerment, a subject revisited in contemporary fashion as recently as five years ago.
“Even adult women who could afford other things were shopping there,” Ms. Stjernsward said. “It was the perfect dress, and the writer of the script probably understood that.”
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