Even if you don’t know the costume designer Sandy Powell by name, there’s a good chance you’ve seen any number of the iconic films she’s marked with her singular visual stamp. For the past 40 years, Powell has worked with some of the greatest modern auteurs—Martin Scorsese, Todd Haynes, Derek Jarman, and Yorgos Lanthimos among them—to costume films like The Favourite and The Irishman. Now, SCAD FASH Museum of Fashion + Film in Atlanta is celebrating Powell, who is of OBE designation, and her lengthy career with its latest exhibition: “Sandy Powell’s Dressing the Part: Costume Design for Film.” The exhibition (curated by SCAD FASH’s creative director, Rafael Gomes,) chronicles the work of cinema’s most celebrated, living costume designer with over 100 pieces from films such as Shakespeare In Love (for which she won her first of three Academy Awards), Interview With a Vampire, The Wolf of Wall Street, Carol, and many more. This is the first time that an entire retrospective on Powell’s work has been presented to the public. Cinephiles, rejoice!
“It’s incredible, actually,” Powell told W magazine of experiencing the exhibition in its full form. “When I see the extent of it and how huge it is, it makes me feel old, but in a good way. It’s revisiting my life, because each of these films and collections or costumes have stories behind them—they remind me of where I was in the world, what was happening in my life.”
Sandy Powell poses with some costumes from The Favourite on view at SCAD FASH.
Courtesy of SCAD FASH
Gomes approached Powell two years ago to gauge her interest in doing an exhibition that would commemorate her career until now. In fact, it was the first time she was ever asked to present her work in this way. “It was exciting to gather everything again,” Powell says, “At first, I thought, where’s it all going to come from? Then I realized I had a huge archive myself, which I’ve been accumulating at the end of a film for years—they’ve just been stuffed away somewhere, not stored properly at all. I thought, Great, we can get all of these things out of my house in one place taken care of properly for six months! There’s a part of me that doesn’t want them to come home. I’d like them to stay out, being looked at.”
Each costume on display is illuminated from within a black box structure, meant to replicate the feeling of looking into a cinema projection. There are tons of rare glimpses into the precision, dedication, time, and level of creativity it takes to make a costume with a lasting impact beyond opening night. For example, in Shakespeare in Love, one of the dresses on display made for Queen Elizabeth I (portrayed by Dame Judi Dench) was done in a highly ornate metal embroidery with epaulette panels.
“Costume design exhibitions are very different from fashion design exhibitions,” Gomes explained. “Here, we are recreating the body of every single actor and actress, a completely different approach that we call ‘mannequinage’ in the museum world, which is literally reproducing the body of an actor on a dress form.” One of the most striking instances of the practice comes later in the exhibition, via a blue, bustled dress designed for a then-11 year old Kristen Dust in Interview With a Vampire.
Carol, whose title character portrayed by Cate Blanchett had about 90 percent of her looks made from scratch, represents with a gorgeous standout—a blonde fur that perfectly complemented Blanchett’s skin tone. “This is actually a recreation of the one that we used—it’s very, very close,” Powell said. “The one we actually used was pieced together by old bits of vintage coats, simply because I was determined to get the right color for her—because it’s Cate. It was very fragile. It split every single day of the shoot, so every day the costumer was underneath, sewing or taping up the splits.”
When asked what visitors should take away from the exhibition, Powell kept it simple. “Oh, I just hope they’ve enjoyed it!” she said.
Sandy Powell’s Dressing the Part: Costume Design for Film is on view now through March 16, 2025.
