Are clothes in films bought off the racks at stores or made from scratch in-house?

Reuel Gomez · January 12, 2014

One thing that I've always wondered is if clothes (not counting shoes) are made in house by the costume designer and wardrobe department or bought off the racks at stores. I don't mean just suits or dresses or costumes but everyday clothing like t-shirts or jeans.

Adrian Sierkowski · January 12, 2014

Depends on the clothes. Some of them will be custom, some of them will be purchased. There is no catchall answer to it. I would say the more "period" the film the more likely they were "built," specifically.

Reuel Gomez · January 12, 2014

Depends on the clothes. Some of them will be custom, some of them will be purchased. There is no catchall answer to it. I would say the more "period" the film the more likely they were "built," specifically.

What about films based in the modern day here in America? Do the majority of those films buy their clothes or make them?

Adrian Sierkowski · January 12, 2014

Again it depends on the specific needs of the film and the costume. Sometimes they'll find what's right off of the rack, other times, they may make their own- it all depends on what type of movie they're doing. If you look at something like Iron man, part of the character is in the clothes he wears-- as such i would suspect many of them were bought off of the rack to reenforce the "brand," if you get what I mean.

David Mullen ASC · January 12, 2014

Generally clothes are bought off the rack for modern films, either new or used, just that they buy multiple copies, how many depending on things like whether the clothes will have to get dirty or have to be pre-dirtied and messed up to different degrees to match the story, since scenes are shot out of order. Plus sometimes stunt people and photo doubles will need to wear a matching copy of the actor's wardrobe.

When clothes are sown from scratch, that's usually because they can't find them in stores for various reasons (unique design, unusual size or stunt needs, etc.) or that they have to use special fabrics for some reason.

It gets trickier though with designer clothes with obvious labels because then you get into clearance or licensing issues.

Reuel Gomez · January 12, 2014

It gets trickier though with designer clothes with obvious labels because then you get into clearance or licensing issues.

As in designer clothes, do you mean any old brand like say Levi or Nike or something like Ralph Lauren or Calvin Klein?

Adrian Sierkowski · January 12, 2014

If it has the brand name visible you get into licensing-- and while I'm no expert-- if it's "unique" enough you may get into murky waters too. But if you, say, have someone wearing a pair of jeans which are Levis, you're ok. If they're wearing a tee-shirt which says "levis" on it, you'll need a license/clearance.

Reuel Gomez · January 12, 2014

If it has the brand name visible you get into licensing-- and while I'm no expert-- if it's "unique" enough you may get into murky waters too. But if you, say, have someone wearing a pair of jeans which are Levis, you're ok. If they're wearing a tee-shirt which says "levis" on it, you'll need a license/clearance.

What if someone is wearing a pair of Nike or Converse? If the logo is big enough and clearly visible and/or the design is unique enough, would that make a difference?

David Mullen ASC · January 12, 2014

You fall into that vague category of whether you are "featuring" the logo. Shoot an insert of the shoe with the Nike logo being very visible and you probably should get it cleared with Nike. A medium shot where someone with sharp eyes can make out the logo on the shoes but it doesn't catch your eye, you probably would be OK without clearance but it depends on the company.

If the character was a serial killer and he kills people while wearing Nike shoes, then you probably not only would never get clearance from Nike, you may get sued by Nike if a lot of audience members were going to notice the shoes, so you have to remove the logo, just as you would remove the Levi patch from the jeans.

You have plenty of scenes in movies where cars by Ford, Toyota, Honda, etc. all drive by the camera or are parked in the street and obviously you are allowed to shoot them... as long as you don't start the shot on a tight close-up of the logo of the car company before rack-focusing to the action, i.e. "featuring" the product.

It's just standard operating procedure to get clearance on clothes with logos, featured appliances, new vehicles driven by characters, etc. Most costume designers, production designers, prop people, etc. know how to do this and know which companies are easy to deal with and which aren't. Sometimes you end up having to "greek" out the logo, i.e. put a piece of black tape over the word "SONY" on a TV set in a scene, etc.

You get clearances just like you have to get character names cleared legally too.