Dress Codes - Costume Design

Joe

Joe Young is a victamised teenager who we originally think is the hero of the film as we first see him, but later learn that he commits suicide, leaving his girlfriend, Kym alone. As Joe is an ex-gang member we wanted Joe to have urban, teenage dress codes.
In the film 'Seven Pounds', Will Smith plays a depressed man who commits suicide and donates many of his organs to people who need them, including the woman he is in love with. He often wears a suit or a grey t-shirt and dark casual pants like in the photo below. In 'Leaving Las Vegas', Nicholas Cage plays an alcoholic Hollywood screenwriter who lost everything because of his drinking; he arrives in Las Vegas to drink himself to death. He often wears a black blazer and white shirt or coloured shirt like the sickly- purple one below. In Harold and Maude the young character Harold finds himself obsessed with death until he meets Maude. Before he meets her he wears quite unusual quirky shirts and jackets, in the photo he is wearing an unusual coat, these however may be because of the time period this film was made and set in. 
Will Smith in Seven Pounds (2008)   Nicholas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas (1995) Bud Cort in Harold and Maude (1971)

Baring these characters in mind we will try to create a character who is trying to hide his gangster past and also having lots of suicidal thoughts. We shall therefore dress our character in the first scene, where he and Kym appear to be a happy couple, in a black t-shirt with dark blue jeans and black trainers, which could suggest there is something dark and secretive about this character.  He will also wear a plain hoodie. In the scene when he throws himself off the bridge he will wear a dark blue t-shirt to show depression with no jacket to show the cold doesn’t affect him as his main thoughts are on his death.

Kym

The main character in our film is going to be Kym, she will play the role of the hero; this contradicts the common convention of thrillers having a male role for the hero however there are many thrillers with women heroes that worked very well. Such as:

Keira Knightley in Domino (2005) Jodie Foster in Flight plan (2005) Angelina Jolie in Tomb Raider (2001) Baring these in mind we will create a character who is very strong and who is forced to be independent. A common convention of the dress codes in the above films and other women in thrillers is black and dark colours rather than light girly colours. As our film is set in modern day and the characters are quite young, aged 17, we also want their dress code to be quite casual. They all also seem to have short hair or their hair tied back making them look strong and slightly masculine. None look very avertedly sexual as they have high necked tops that don’t flatter their figures. We are not aiming for a fém fatal character type in which the character may wear much more flattering clothes.

It was in the mid ’80s, when Sigourney Weaver took on the acid-blooded alien in James Cameron’s Aliens that women stopped being the objects of desire, the manipulative seductresses or the helpless victims, and began to take leading roles in action pictures, working just as well as the greatest male action heroes.
To conclude, our female character Kym will wear dark black jeans to suggest casualness and a typical modern teenager. In the scenes when she is outside she may wear a black or dark jacket, maybe leather to suggest a tougher type of woman that we see in thrillers. She will wear a pink jumper underneath to suggest love and happiness and in her second scene where she is alone in her bedroom after her boyfriend has commit suicide she will wear a grey tshirt which suggests she is tough, the black jeans being the same as last time will show that she does not bother too much about fashion and has her mind on other things.