Snark Week is starting next Monday, guys! I know, it’s been a whole year, and it seems like forever. We can hardly wait to share all the snarky goodness we’ve saved up, but you just have to wait another few days. Still, I thought I’d give a little amuse bouche to whet your appetite today, as a distraction from (and, yes, mocking of) the Cheeto-dusted tangerine trashcan fire that’s happening in America right now. And heck, even if you’re OK that a screaming carrot demon is taking over as leader of the free world, these crappy historical costumes may make you reconsider orange as the new black.
1. Queen Elizabeth – Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007)
Oh Shekhar Kapur, you and your playing fast and loose with history. While we love Cate Blanchett as QEI, why does she get this crazy Elizabethan haute couture dress that looks like a malformed traffic cone topped with two plumes of unkempt troll doll hair?
2. Princess Margaret – The Tudors (2007)
She’s a fictional mashup of Henry VIII’s two sisters, Mary and Margaret, so who cares if she wears an off-the-shoulder Cheez-Wizz-colored gown to match her Oompa-Loompa spray tan. Go for the gold, sistah!
3. Constance – The Three Musketeers (1974)
Raquel Welch is squarely to blame for this putrescent orange marshmallow of a dress. In an otherwise gorgeously costumed film, she looks like an extra from a high-school theater production. Or a porn film. Or both. IDK.
Don’t care, tits out.
4. Jane Seymour – The Tudors (2009)
I’m not sure which offends me more: The pathetic “Disney princess” style, its color resembling a soggy cracker spread with spoiled shrimp compote, or the fact that nobody bothered to iron the stupid dress before filming.
5. Lucy Westenra – Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)
Wandering around demon-possessed at midnight is no excuse for looking like a seagull dipped in tikka masala, girl. You can do better Victorian than this Victoria’s Secret knockoff.
C’mon, nobody really sleeps in crap like that!
Credit goes to Jezebel and Samantha Bee for the extra juicy orange-isms!
My bouche is most amused! (Although I always saw Lucy’s weird vampire-slut-peignoir as red.)
I saw it as a red-orange, almost bittersweet. And it was ridiculous, and not Victorian at all, but if I was heading into a garden at midnight for a playdate with a vampire, *that* is what I’d want to wear!
I’d call the color tomato, and I was appalled when I saw it. No Victorian other than a prostitute would have had a nightgown like that.
Think there’s actually a clue there. I think the red is meant to hint to us that she’s had similar attentions from Dracula previous to this. Otherwise she’d be in virginal white or pastels.
Same here but today – anything is better than the alternative! Woohoo Slut vampire dress!
The gowns are hideous. Cate looks like a demented orange something with a flapping Raven or other bird on her head.
I won’t even mention what is wrong with both Tudor dresses and Constance in 3 Musketeers looks like a bad hair day and really bad nightgown. Lucy looks like a nightmare on steroids or something.
Loved the costumes for Richard Lester’s Musketeers movies, with the exception of Raquel Welch. I remember reading that she insisted on her own costume designer, and it shows. She sticks out like an orange thumb.
Yup, it was apparently her idea — click the title link for a full review :)
These are great! I do hope though that someday you do some of the _best_ orange gowns? It’s my favorite color (mostly the different varieties of orange, like bittersweet and persimmon and tangerine- not so much Sunkist/Crayola orange) and sometimes when they’re done right, they’re GLORIOUS!
After Snark Week, sure!
Raquel’s outfits were designed for her by her boyfriend, Ron Talsky. Pretty much says it all. And her hair! Designed by the House of Wattafuckzat.
As for Lucy’s pain-noir, in some prints it reads as more red than orange, which probably means in daylight it’s a scarlet and not a crimson.
Bless you for “House of Wattafuckzat.” This post is giving me hope for the future.
Tikka masala…I’m dying!
I thought Jane Seymour’s gown in The Tudors was pink. Silly me.
I’d go so far as to pronounce the entire wardrobe in the 1992 Dracula film absurd.
Raquel Welch’s Three Musketeers gown is not only hideous, it appears to be made of polyester.
Aside to Trystan: I guess I’d like to know why you guys aren’t dishing on the nonsensical costuming of the Mary Queen of Scots show. Historical stuff has been hopelessly thrown out the window, but the costuming in that show is so correspondingly ridiculous it makes me want to throw things at the television. Did a bunch of 20-something goth girls whose parents never let them go to the prom kill the wardrobe staff and replace them in the dark of night?
They already snarked it a year or two ago ;o)
Do search our site — this is just a ‘top 5 Friday’ where we pick 5 of one thing :) Click on the embedded links for more (each of those titles has a full article; for example, Dracula links to a podcast we did discussing the movie’s costumes).
And as for the Mary Queen of Scots TV show? Oh yes, search the site or use the tags — we’ve covered it A LOT — https://www.frockflicks.com/tag/reign/
Thanks, I’m new to the site (just one week!) and will try to remember to do some site-searching before commenting. Also, after payday on Friday, I will send you a donation. This site is too much fun not be plugged into on a regular basis–finally, someone who doesn’t do an eyeroll when I complain about historical costuming in movies!
I agree that the entire wardrobe in that 1992 Dracula film is awful, with the armor being the worst of all. It’s even uglier in person, as I saw it displayed in the Coppola winery.
Not to mention how much it strayed from the novel but had the chutzpah to put Stoker’s name in the title.
Ah, and would it not be the most amusing thing possible if Melania-Deer-In-Headlights showed up in public wearing orange ANYTHING, ever?
They’d blend together into one big screaming neon orange blob! Ew.
She’s trying so hard to look respectable that we’re likely never to see her in anything so bright.
LOVE Cate’s dress! The dresses in that film might not be period correct…but every one of them is scrumptious.
A couple of yummy looking things on that list, but NOT period, AT ALL. OK, just QEI’s and Lucy’s. The others are hideous.
Who thought the brocade faux forepart for QEI was a good idea?
Probably the director and screenwriter as they know nothing about period clothes or Elizabeth I.
I view both Elizabeth films as great acting on Cate’s part and historically accurate as Reign and the Tudors.
I love you so much for writing this article. Thank you.
I haven’t watched the Tudors but that Jane Seymour gown looks like 70s crushed velvet to me so triple ick. Good choice of subject for today btw. I thought you guys would do something appropriate to the moment.
“Seagull dipped in tikka masala” made be bust out laughing. I think I frightened the dog.
I may never be able to enjoy tikka masala again.
Snarking in another area. Did anyone else think Mrs Trump’s Inaugural Dress looked like President Alma Coin’s from MJII ?
Many compared it to Jackie Kennedy’s ice-blue inaugural outfit. Similar color and lines.
At least we can rest assured that Jackie O. never squinted and wasn’t hopelessly botoxed in 1961.
Oh, I must have had to switch off my phone as I was at doctor’s appointment for my mom. I was YouTube-ing it.
I didn’t think of that and I’ve only seen black and white pics of Jackie’s. Coin’s was what came to my mind.
To be fair, blame should be given where blame is due: both of the Tudors dresses were borrowed from other productions. Margmary’s was created for Shakespeare in love and Jane’s is from the Virgin Queen.
there is no fairness in Snark Week — or its previews ;-)
probably there was so much polyester in #4 that any heat would melt it :’D
truth!!!
Polyester the bane of all costumers.
In all honesty, I”m not sure why Anna Chancellor’s orange P&P monstrosities were left out :)