neat costume and film history

October 9, 2010 11:28 AM

RecycledMovieCostumes.com A site of screencaps and photos tracking outfits that show up in different movies. So sometimes you're watching a movie and you say "that actor looks familiar." This is a collection of photos and comparisons for the times you've thought "that outfit looks familiar."

I like the juxtapositions that come up. Sometimes, it makes historical sense. Sometimes, it's just odd (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind + Firefly)

I'm thinking of using it to organize a movie night or two, or to remind myself of movies I haven't seen.

posted by SaharaRose (15 comments total)

I'm really happy they went through the trouble of making this website so that I can enjoy looking at it.™
posted by Stonestock Relentless at 12:15 PM on October 9, 2010

Having had a flick through, it seems that the majority are period piece costumes, which is hardly surprising. Being intricate, expensive, and evocative of an era they're highly likely to be reused simply because of the cost involved.
posted by djgh at 12:24 PM on October 9, 2010

It blows my mind people notice these details -and that they make a blog about it. But in a good way! I love to see these well-done niche interest obsessions....
posted by Rumple at 12:28 PM on October 9, 2010 [2 favorites]

You can rent a genuine movie costume from The Western Costume Company in LA. You too can dress like the stars!
posted by Quietgal at 12:50 PM on October 9, 2010

Further proof everyone on tv or in the movies is actually an alien clone. How did I discover this? Because if you watch, really close, they all read the same newspaper. It's where they get their orders from the trilateral reptillian conspiracy mothership. Now they entertain us, but later, after we're used to them, they'll start issuing us orders. Oh you laugh now, but you know I'm really right.
/me puts tinfoil helmet back on and hides in basement.

/hamburger...

or is it!?
posted by 1f2frfbf at 1:23 PM on October 9, 2010 [6 favorites]

I think some of these aren't actually the same thing. Example. This is cool to look through though!
posted by thirteenkiller at 2:31 PM on October 9, 2010

What I took away from this is that I am really not up on my historical dramas. I haven't seen most of them, and there are many I've never even heard of.
posted by orange swan at 4:53 PM on October 9, 2010

This happens in theater a lot too -- at some level it's inevitable, because a lot of lower-budget productions get a lot of things from The Costume Collection, a big costume warehouse that a lot of theaters use. So a dress I wore in a production of Glass Menagerie goes back there, and someone else doing a production of The 39 Steps could use it for their production a month later.

But one time I was working on a show with a costumer who also worked at The Public Theater, and had access to their own costume collection. We were doing a show set in Puritan New England, so there were lots of peasant shirts on the men and what not. And about a week into the run, our lead was in the dressing room, getting into his costume shirt, when suddenly he noticed, for the first time, a name written in the collar of the shirt -- "Mr. Julia."

I personally had an interesting moment -- our community theater did another show set in Colonial America the fall of my senior year in high school, and I was one of the extras. They made me this yellow calico dress and a bonnet and all that; the show closed, that was that. Then in the spring, we did Brigadoon and I was in that too -- this time with a blue dress, complete with tartan stomacher. It wasn't until I sweat some of the dye off the dress after the second dress rehearsal that I noticed -- that blue dress was the same yellow dress, after it'd had an hour-long date with a box of Rit. I'm not surprised at the recycling of costumes, but the odds of the same person getting the same recycled costume are probably kind of remote -- or it says something about how cheap my local theater group was.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:30 PM on October 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

Haven't clicked through yet, but I'm predicting those helmets from Starship Troopers keep showing up.
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 8:57 PM on October 9, 2010

@pbzm yep, the helmet is there in three easy clicks: gallery - scifi - thumbnail.
posted by beardlace at 12:29 AM on October 10, 2010

orange swan, is that really something you intend to rectify?
posted by randomyahoo at 2:09 AM on October 10, 2010

I seem to remember in the extras for a Doctor Who episode (Mask of Mandragora - set in Renaissance Itally) that they used the same costumes as another historical drama (The Borgias, I think) but they got some costumes for the main characters from a costume suppliers in Italy where they had previously been used in a film (I think Romeo and Juliet)

I remember as a kid watching Points Of View (tv show which read out viewers letters praising/moaning at the BBC) where several people the same car had been used at the end of one program and then appeared on screen of the beginning of the following different program. One bloke then wrote that it has also appeared in something several years previously - because his hobby was writing down the number plates of every car he saw on television.... Even as a child, and not even knowing the word, I was disturbed at just how nerdy that was.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:02 AM on October 10, 2010

The website seems to think that lots of the costumes were made for a specific production--more likely some costume supply house rented them out. This isn't uncommon. No studio has big costume vaults just sitting around. Even when Edith Head was at Paramount, she'd reuse and remake costumes pretty often.

London alone has The Angels, Cosprop,and dozens more.
posted by Ideefixe at 10:57 AM on October 10, 2010

The story about the pearl around Liz Taylor's neck is neat.
posted by jamaro at 12:17 PM on October 10, 2010

The Sci-Fi and Fantasy section is in serious need of expansion.
posted by Madaman at 11:32 AM on October 11, 2010