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Issued:12/12/12
Hollywood came to Sheffield last night when Academy Award-nominated costume designer Deborah Nadoolman Landis made an exclusive appearance in the city.
She was at Sheffield Hallam University to share the secrets of a 30-year career creating iconic screen outfits, as well as her role as senior guest curator of Hollywood Costume, a major exhibition taking place at London's Victoria and Albert Museum.
In her only public appearance outside of London, she talked about the role of film costume designers in creating the unique characters film audiences come to love.
She said: "The role of the costume designer has never changed in 100 years.
We help the director figure out who the people are in the story.
"We participate in the creation of these authentic individuals because we really need the audience to care about the outcome of the story. We're helping the director make those people real enough so that the audience connects."
Deborah, who has a PhD on the contribution of costume design to cinema storytelling, told stories of the challenges she faced in gathering more than 100 iconic costumes that make up the Hollywood Costume exhibition from private collectors and studios all over the world.
The ground-breaking exhibition is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the clothes worn by unforgettable and beloved characters such as Dorothy Gale, Indiana Jones, Scarlett O'Hara, Jack Sparrow, Holly Golightly and Darth Vader. It runs in London until January 2013.
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Married to famous Hollywood director John Landis, with whom she frequently collaborates and who was in the audience, Deborah's own costume design credits include Animal House, The Blues Brothers, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Michael Jackson’s Thriller, Trading Places and Coming to America, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award.
She most recently designed costumes for the period comedy Burke & Hare (2010) and has also published several books about Hollywood costume design.
Speaking of her contribution to the movie business she said: "I've just been very, very lucky. I've worked with wonderful directors and actors and I've been involved in these amazingly iconic productions that are at a level where generations of people have loved them."
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