9 Times When Costume Designers Royally Messed Up in Famous Movies Without Anyone Noticing!
Even though there are dozens of different experts that work on the appearances of characters in movies, they aren’t immune to making mistakes. And in the end, viewers may catch these fails in makeup or costume choices that couldn’t have possibly existed during the time in which the movie was set.
We at Bright Side decided to watch some of our favorite movies and read some fashion history books to find the mistakes makeup artists and costume designers have made in popular films.
Gone with the Wind
© akg-images / EAST NEWS, © Gone with the Wind / Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, © Mary Evans / AF Archive / Mary Evans Picture Library / East News
No matter how trendy Scarlett O’Hara was, she couldn’t have predicted the clothing trends for decades in advance. Her famous slim-fitting red dress with feathers and rhinestones has nothing to do with Civil War fashion — it was inspired more by styles from the 1930s and 1940s.
Julius Caesar
© Julius Caesar / Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
In the 1953 film, most of the female characters wore extravagant bullet bras. In Ancient Rome, women would wear a strophium, a prototype for the modern bra, but these weren’t bullet bras.
Legends of the Fall
© Legends of the Fall / Bedford Falls Productions, © Ann Ronan Picture Library / Image State / East News
Trying to create a romantic look, costume designers ignored the historical facts. Brad Pitt’s character has beautiful blonde hair and facial hair but these things were unacceptable for the time period. More and more men were choosing to don big mustaches and short hair at this time.
King Arthur
© King Arthur / Touchstone Pictures
The film, which is set in the fifth century, portrays knights in heavy metal armor. But until the fourteenth century, such armor was made of leather, and only mail armor was made of metal.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
© Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix / Warner Bros. Pictures
The film is about events that happened in the ’90s and the clothes look pretty accurate, however, they’re still not perfect. Dudley Dursley is wearing G-Unit shorts — a brand that was created by 50 Cent in 2003.
Hello, Dolly!
© Hello, Dolly! / 20th Century Studios, © Hello, Dolly! / 20th Century Studios
The movie is set in New York at the end of the nineteenth century when such a hairstyle, lip gloss, and eye makeup didn’t exist. But the movie still got 3 Oscars and became one of the most important films of the decade.
Queen Margot
© La Reine Margot / France 2 Cinéma
Throughout the entire film, the characters are wearing beautiful dresses with open shoulders. They look great but in the sixteenth century, women never ignored shifts (or chemise in French). These pieces of clothing protected them from the cold, absorbed sweat, and were really easy to wash.
© La Reine Margot / France 2 Cinéma, © Chevalier d’Éon / Wikimedia Commons
Another mistake costume designers made was the way the main character’s hair was let down. Based on the few portraits we have of Margaret of Valois, she had curly hair that she wore up.
The Danish Girl
© The Danish Girl / Working Title Films, © akg-images / EAST NEWS
The Danish Girl starts in 1926 but in the first half of the film, we see women in slim-fitting clothes that have nothing to do with the fashion of the 1920s.
© The Danish Girl / Working Title Films, © Courtesy Everett Collection/East News
At the beginning of the film, Gerda has a hairstyle that was actually quite outdated for the setting that favored waved or bobbed hair.
A Dangerous Method
© A Dangerous Method / Recorded Picture Company
In one scene, Keira Knightley appears only in her corset, which is a contradiction to the original rules that came along with wearing this piece of clothing. A woman would never wear a corset alone.
Bonus: Mary Queen of Scots
© Mary Queen of Scots / Working Title Films
In Mary Queen of Scots, Saoirse Ronan is wearing asymmetric earrings, which were non-existent in sixteenth-century Scotland.