Easily one of the top 10 — top 5? — ever historical costume movies for the bustle era, The Age of Innocence (1993) was directed by Martin Scorsese and won the Best Costume Design Oscar that year, thanks to the work of Gabriella Pescucci. The performances by Daniel Day-Lewis as Newland Archer, Winona Ryder as May Welland, and Michelle Pfeiffer as Ellen Olenska are sublime, but the exquisite costumes are truly breathtaking. Let’s indulge in the eye candy and review, chronologically, all the fabulous bustle gowns worn by the leading ladies, shall we?
May’s White Archery Dress
Sporty yet perfectly ladylike and well-matched with Newland’s white linen.
On display at Tirelli Costumes.
May’s Pale Print Day Dress
She is still the picture of purity and innocence, per the title. Unknowing, clueless in fact.
May’s Engagement Party Ensembles
May and her girlfriends wear white satin and are swathed in tulle for the big party. There’s so much detail in all these gowns — they’re like reproductions of period originals by Charles Frederick Worth!
May’s gown, front. On display at Tirelli Costumes.
May’s gown, back. On display at Tirelli Costumes.
On display at Tirelli Costumes.
Friend’s gown, front. On display at Tirelli Costumes.
Friend’s gown, back. On display at Tirelli Costumes.
Friend’s gown, front. On display at Tirelli Costumes.
Friend’s gown, side. On display at Tirelli Costumes.
May’s Wedding Gown
After those dresses, her actual wedding gown isn’t quite as spectacular, but I’m including it for good measure.
May’s Blue and Gold Stripe Day Dress
She does get some other clothes than pastels. In fact, May wears several very snappy tailored blue gowns.
May’s Navy Plaid Day Dress
And this crisp dark gown.
May’s Purple Evening Gown
But my favorite dress Winona Ryder wears has got to be this purple number.
On display at Tirelli Costumes.
On display at Tirelli Costumes.
Ellen’s Blue Opera Gown
Most of what Michelle Pfeiffer’s character wears is dark jewel tones, like this blue gown.
On display at Tirelli Costumes.
Ellen’s Red Evening Gown
Then there’s this, the red dress, easily the best gown in the entire film. If you don’t love this one, I don’t know why you read Frock Flicks!
On display at Tirelli Costumes.
Ellen’s Pale Blue-Green Tea Gown
An icy pale gown for the most heartbreaking scene in the movie. It looks so unlike what Ellen has worn previously, as she gives up a chance at happiness.
On display at Tirelli Costumes.
On display at Tirelli Costumes.
Ellen’s White Day Dress
A rare view of Ellen in all white.
Ellen’s Green Velvet Coat
And, while not exactly a bustle, we finish off with an elegant coat for that most restrained of kisses.
What’s your favorite bustle outfit from The Age of Innocence?
Ellen’s red dinner party dress, hands down! Followed by her pale blue printed satin number…that scene, where Newland slowly moves his hands down over her gotten to her satin shoes done in the same print as the dress is so 1870s HOT!!
Not to mention, reveals all the amazing details of her dress up close. So few period costume dramas show off the details like The Age of Innocence did. I love it not just for the story, but because it’s similar to Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette in that it invests a lot of camera time on the details.
Martin Scorsese is all about the details, for sure!
Oops, not gotten: gown.
Damn, auto correct LOL
This is one of my all-time favourite FrockFlicks. I simply adore, Gentle Reader, all the costumes of the film. But entre nous, if I had to pick a favourite, May’s Purple dinner dress would tie with Ellen’s Red one. Both dresses convey their wearers’ characters. May, no longer clueless but a woman in control of her life (she uses her ‘innocence’, Society’s mores to achieve her goals). It conveys power, elegance and subtly sex. Ellen’s character is more complicated, the red dress is sexy (worldly), unconventional and hiding something (her European past & unhappiness).
Yes, those two gowns are so perfect, both as dresses alone & for the scenes they’re used in!
Any of Ellen’s gowns, but particularly the blue -if only I had her figure . . . And yay Tristan! You multitalented Renaissance woman.
May’s archery dress was really great too. It felt & looked so light & summery with everything in bloom around her.
Was anyone else amazed with how teeny tiny her waist is in that dress?! Makes me curious as to what Ryder’s corseted waist measurements were? Lol, looks pretty close to Scarlet O’Hara’s coveted 18 1/2″
Ellen’s red evening gown, of course. However, I feel that May’s engagement gown is a close second for me.
My God, the costumes in this movie were gorgeous!
My ex and I were dress extras in the opera scene. She made her own top — which wardrobe tried to get from her after shooting because they thought it was one of theirs. She has fair skin and dark hair, so they made her brown it out for the shoot. It took two days to shoot what amounted to less than five minutes onscreen. The poor kids who were singing had to sing the same few phrases over and over for something like 100 takes. To pass the down time, someone organised a talent show in the holding area. Was quite impressive. A lot of the extras were retired businessmen who fumed at the huge consumption of time and money for so little result. The promised box suppers for the second day came so late they were take-homes for most of us. Ah, the glamour of it all! Ryder looked extremely unwell through most of it.
What a fantastic story!!!
Yeah, we figured out that if they’d been paid for it, the talent show would have cost about $600,000. As for story, it’s basically about two people who didn’t do anything to, for, or with, each other.
Haha, that’s funny you mention a lot of the retired business men were aghast at the “huge consumption” & waste of time/money in shooting what amounts to a 5 minute scene…just like the Gilded Age! It was all about huge consumer consumption amongst the uber upper classes.
But this was the other end of the pipeline. The nobs would be quite happy with the money spent on the end product, but not on the money spent making it.
I’ve always been a bit “meh” about the plot of this film, but the costumes are to die for. That pale tea gown was the first time I ever had serious envy watching a movie. Something about the way it moved, sounded, looked on screen… I fell in love.
I also love the purple / pink dress. So pretty.
SUCH TINY WAISTS. GAH.
All great! You must do this with Anna Karenina too!
I second Melinda’s recommendation!! Please do a recap of the best bustles in the ’97 Karenina :)
Sorry, I have to ask: when you say “On exhibition at Tirelli costumes”, do you mean that is a place I can actually visit? Because I’m going to Rome this fall and I would DIE to see those costumes in person.
(Well. Give a limb. Either way.)
I specifically meant on display on their website, but if you poke around there enough, you’ll see that Tirelli has held various displays of their costumers’ works thru the years. I don’t know if that’s *at* their own facility or elsewhere. Only some of their website is in English!
PS: If you find out & visit, report on what you see to Frock Flicks :)
The bottom gown that was listed as belonging to a friend was also in one of you guys’ articles about anna karenina (https://www.frockflicks.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/exhibit3.jpg)
Was it a reused costume?
I really don’t want to be that person, commenting late, but what the hell, the power of pedantry compels me – this is natural form era. None of those dresses have bustles. The whole point of the natural form era is that they eschewed the bustle (until it came back, mid-decade). I could be wrong ( I may very well be, if I am, forgive me) but I needed to say something.
Edith Wharton loved the image of a lady in a pale gown against dark leather furniture – it comes up in the House of Mirth, and in a short story the name of which slips my mind, and here. I thought all the ladies looked fantastic (although some of the outfits read more 1880’s than 1876 to me, but mine isn’t the most trained eye – I watch these things to pick at the sets, like the ladies of Frock Flicks do the costumes) but I’m just not happy with Newland’s hat. I’ve seen similar ones – had to look it up afterward to see for sure, but when I was watching it, my knee-jerk reaction was that it looked more like the types of “top hat” women wore with riding habits? The style I saw later, checking in on this detail that survived the night’s drinks to haunt me over coffee, did have the curved sides, but didn’t have the creased crown. 7/10 overall though – even if they did use early 20th century Hubbard oil lamps in place :)
God even the tea gowns had corset-like waistlines…at least they loosened up in the Edwardian era, brief though it was. I thought DDL’s character was such a weak spineless man in this, in so many ways. So afraid of stepping out of his destiny as it was just never done. He seemed pathetic to me. Ellen at least cared little of opinions when she took her own house, saw who she liked etc…she was much braver.
Ha, I just watched it for the first time and felt the same. Maybe I’ve just reached my limit of White Man Angst 🤣