| home :: costume :: livejournal |
|
Unused Swim Dress from Titanic
The fabrics of the dress remain unchanged: layers of ombré dyed silk chiffon. At the back, there's a nice detail of 18th century style 'watteau' pleats. The wide sash is made of silk velvet, material not seen in the final swim dress. There's a weight sewn to the both front corners of the overdress. The clip also gives a nice peek at what Rose normally wears under her dresses: long legged white (silk?) drawers over a corset. The drawers and the chemise seem to be combined into one garment; this type of undergarment was called combinations and reduced bulk at the waist of these slim dresses that had become fashionable.
These screen caps come from the second movie disk of the DVD set, behind the scenes pod 33 called "Kate's action costume".
In this image Deborah Scott is showing the unused dress for the director James Cameron. (By a swimming pool? I wonder if they're going to test how it looks wet!)
Here's what they ended up using in the film. The silk velvet sash is gone and a beaded white inset is added to the front. The sleeves remain the same. The skirts were completely redesigned, layers were added and some were shortened to better show the ombré dyed hem detail.
|
The sketch on the left was released when the movie came out but
the exact design was never seen in the finished film. Until now - in
the special edition DVD release there's a behing the scenes clip of Kate
Winslet wardrobe test of the unused swim dress. So they
made the dress but never used it! Costume designer Deborah Scott
has said that the swim dress was probably the biggest design
challenge in the movie. It was the dress that got most of the
screen time and it had to look good both dry and wet. Not to
mention that over 20 of these dresses had to be made for the filming.
