Adorning Film: How Fashion is its own Character in Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula

Words Eloise Hallo

Coppola’s ren­di­tion of Drac­u­la con­tends with a long list of rel­a­tives. The tale of a blood-quenched Count has shad­owed cin­e­mas, the­atres, pages, and the like, rel­a­tive­ly com­mon­place since the con­cep­tion of its name­sake, Bram Stoker’s 1897 nov­el. I would argue, how­ev­er, no such repli­ca has done so with the flare of our Fran­cis Ford’s; in many moments the film’s gar­men­try far pales in its aghast than to those vignettes of true hor­ror, and — as I watch and re-watch the work — I still find myself dis­tract­ed by the mas­tery of char­ac­ters’ cos­tum­ing, in scenes where pig blood spouts assertive­ly from their necks. And, this mas­tery is mul­ti­tu­di­nal. Rip­pling through the vast and cal­cu­lat­ed themes of its sto­ry, fash­ion forms its very own ani­ma — rep­re­sent­ing lust, desire, betray­al, and love — a kind of con­den­sa­tion forged on our win­dow into the plot. A gam­bit, there­fore, of sub­stance and rich­ness, the film’s fash­ion is most cer­tain­ly a char­ac­ter of self-accord.

One of our first exam­ples comes in the shape of Dracula’s brides — or the weird sis­ters as they are some­times referred to — a nod to the trio of match­ing titles of Shakespeare’s Mac­beth and an ode to our long-held mis­at­tri­bu­tion between female com­pan­ion­ship and the occult. In them, we have our first run-in with the film’s car­nal­i­ty and, as they gnaw at Keanu Reeves’ tes­ti­cles, one could scarce­ly rea­son oth­er­wise. Yet we have known this would come. Sheathed robes leave lit­tle to the imag­i­na­tion, while archa­ic drap­ing reminds us of the old world they belong to, and the two dis­obey the pious order of the film’s Vic­to­ri­an cos­tum­ing until this point. It is this very for­eign­ness that adds to their fear­some­ness, and it is fore­told bale­ful­ly in their dress, rep­re­sent­ing not any-old-hor­ror but dae­mon­ic hor­ror, sex­u­al­ly trans­gres­sive, vio­lent, and con­trar­i­ly female, as man becomes meat.

Lucy West­en­ra broad­ens our study. Her char­ac­ter — who trav­els from a naive ten­den­cy for lust as she lives to a crea­ture cor­rupt­ed whol­ly by un-death — rais­es an impor­tant sug­ges­tion about a woman’s pre­dis­po­si­tion for immoral­i­ty in Bram Stoker’s imag­ined world. Eiko Ish­io­ka, the film’s cos­tume design­er, who worked under Coppola’s instruc­tion that ‘the cos­tumes be the set’, flexed her mus­cles per­haps most for­mi­da­bly in the ques­tion of Lucy. When we meet her, fash­ion­ing is used to form a com­plete pic­ture of Lucy’s behav­iour in com­pared to her peers. Bold colours, accen­tu­at­ed décol­letage, and cein­ture rep­re­sent the harm­less flir­ta­tion to her nature — a pre-Raphaelite incar­na­tion — high­light­ing her fem­i­nin­i­ty, a tool which she uses to seduce. In the acts to fol­low, it is this very infir­mi­ty that lures her to the gar­den, where she will be turned by Drac­u­la. And, escaped from her cof­fin, seem­ing­ly not quite so well-placed, she will be killed by her fiancé in the dress she was to mar­ry — the final pun­ish­ment in a les­son that has taught the dan­gers to the fick­le fair­er sex, all the while hint­ing so through its garmentry. 

In all our lead­ing ladies, female lust is ani­mised as not only a betray­al of wom­an­hood, but to the struc­ture of human­i­ty itself, and, in all its camp and fan­fare, I believe this to be a cri­tique. Cop­po­la plays into the fears of prig­gish men — who have hap­pi­ly enjoyed the ease of domes­ti­cat­ed women — and who, in his film, try des­per­ate­ly to reck­on with the trea­son of such women lib­er­at­ing them­selves, from gen­der roles, gild­ed waists, and, ulti­mate­ly, the realm of the liv­ing; all three of which smil­ing­ly slap the face of com­fort­able Vic­to­ri­an virtue and, cun­ning­ly, raise a mir­ror still to our own. As such, their fash­ion­ing — sen­su­al and empow­ered — becomes the phys­i­cal state of their insult to moral­i­ty and, in many ways, a mes­sage to reject sub­mis­sion — a set I’m cer­tain Ish­io­ka knew she was building.

Winona Ryder’s char­ac­ter, Mina Mur­ray, works to affirm con­cerns that fem­i­nin­i­ty exists in an inher­ent state of either object or abject. In her we wit­ness a shift from rel­a­tive puri­ty to, as with her com­rades, lech­ery of both soul and wardrobe. One of the key moments in her styling sur­rounds the illic­it meet­ing with Drac­u­la, a long-lost love she does not entire­ly under­stand, hav­ing lived many lives through his unortho­dox tenure. And, it was imper­a­tive that her dress emu­late this impas­sion, which comes to her, in many ways, as weak­ness; a lust­ful­ness improp­er of her sex and unfit­ting to her nature — unaware to the super­nat­ur­al that has hummed, and hums still, in both since the pair’s bygone matrimony. 

It is unsur­pris­ing that the dress be red — red, and blood more par­tic­u­lar­ly, exist as a motif of desire through­out the work — what inter­ests me is Ishioka’s inter­pre­ta­tion of ‘bygone’, util­is­ing a sim­i­lar tech­nique as with Dracula’s brides by anti­quat­ing her sil­hou­ette. As in her sketch aside, tulip-like sleeves and a plung­ing neck­line work to ostracise the dress from both Vic­to­ri­an norms and Murray’s typ­i­cal tai­lor­ing. In hark­ing back to past lives and pri­or selves, through cos­tum­ing, the film main­tains its sim­ple sen­ti­ment that we are all a sum of dis­tant parts. In many ways, her dress in the scene proph­e­sies her ulti­mate return to her lover, a fate that was set before her time, and an iden­ti­ty she unknow­ing­ly imi­tates in his presence.

Rather excit­ing­ly, and as is sel­dom true of this series, our male protagonist’s gar­men­try pales per­haps that even of his star­lets. When we meet Drac­u­la, he is not Count, but a noble­man, hav­ing returned from war to find his young bride dead by her hand, love-mad and mis­tak­en­ly of belief he had died in bat­tle. The armour, imper­son­at­ing sinew and mus­cle, sit­u­ates him swift­ly as beast, and, fresh-out-of a betrothed, this is what he becomes, as he renounces God and invokes the forces of hell. Ishioka’s armour fames and defames human anato­my, and the promise of his wolf-head mask tells us he will exist lim­i­nal­ly between per­son and thing for the film’s duration. 

Yet, as the fol­low­ing scenes boast, he is capa­ble of dip­ping his talons in both. As ‘The Count’, his amor­phous robe spot­lights defi­ance of nat­ur­al law; shad­ows move with­out him, pour­ing form­less­ly like the blood its san­guine satin emu­lates. In his day-form, who we will meet when Drac­u­la leaves the con­ti­nent for 19th cen­tu­ry Eng­land, a dash­ing Gary Old­man sports chameleon­ic cut­away coats, cut still with reds we have come to char­ac­ter-asso­ciate.

In both the film’s (and Dracula’s) final acts, cos­tum­ing comes full cir­cle. In a play­ing out of the flayed form his armour fore­told, he must be killed — wit­ting­ly behead­ed — by the woman who has kept what­ev­er parts of him lived alive. In all its Shake­speare­an gore, the film’s cry­ing taut of tragedy comes in this moment, a truth mir­rored by Ishioka’s choice to swap his cus­tom­ary cloak for a new — gold and opu­lent — inspired by Klimt’s most ardent, The Kiss: a noble­man once more, in true death now freed, by undy­ing love.

Cop­po­la and Ishioka’s col­lab­o­ra­tion on Bram Stoker’s clas­sic is, to me, one of the shin­ing exam­ples of union inher­ent to cin­e­ma and cos­tume. Film, as a medi­um of nar­ra­tive — and when done cor­rect­ly — is and should be insep­a­ra­ble from the design of its char­ac­ters, and it is no sur­prise that, amongst oth­er com­men­da­tions, the film won Best Cos­tume Design at the 1993 Acad­e­my Awards. In Bram Stoker’s Drac­u­la, fash­ion right­ly exists as an exten­sion of its plot, in-so-being a char­ac­ter entire­ly of its own.

All imagery accessed, unless oth­er­wise not­ed: Bram Stoker’s Drac­u­la dir. by Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la, prod. by Colum­bia Pic­tures, Sony Pic­tures, 1992.

https://www.giantbomb.com/lucy-westenra/3005–12824/ https://hum101vancecvcc.wordpress.com/2020/07/14/the-women-of-dracula/ https://x.com/peterseepeterdo/status/1290888484891365376 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kiss_(Klimt)