Photo courtesy of SCAD
Long before Sandy Powell’s costumes would grace the silver screen, she was sewing her first bold creation at 5 years old. It was a pint-sized bikini, and the start of a remarkable career. Four decades later, she’s still transforming fabrics into unforgettable characters, each with its own story to tell.
Now, three-time Oscar-winning costume designer Sandy Powell, known for her work on films like The Favourite, Shakespeare in Love, and Carol, showcases her visionary talent off the screen with a new exhibit at SCAD FASH Museum of Fashion + Film. “Sandy Powell’s Dressing the Part: Costume Design for Film” displays her iconic creations and offers an immersive look into her character-driven creative process.
Photo courtesy of SCAD
Spotlighting Powell’s 40-year film career, the exhibition features more than 125 costumes and props from nearly 30 films. Although Powell is well-known in the international film community as an iconic costumier—and the first and only craftsperson to win the coveted British Academy of Film and Television Awards (BAFTA) fellowship in 2023—this is her first museum retrospective. But she’s long thought about having an exhibition, if only to have somewhere to display her ever-growing treasure trove. “I have quite a large collection of my own costumes, which I’ve been sneakily collecting over the years,” Powell told The Hollywood Reporter.
After decades of using the corners of her house as archival storage, her costumes have finally found a place beyond the silver screen at SCAD FASH. “There’s a part of me that doesn’t want them to come home,” she says. “I’d like them to stay out, being looked at.”
Rafael Gomes, curator and creative director for SCAD FASH, approached Powell two years ago to gauge her interest in doing an exhibition. “Featuring the work of Sandy Powell has been a goal of ours since the museum opened nearly a decade ago,” Gomes says. “SCAD FASH always wants to highlight the best in costuming and fashion, and Sandy Powell is such a highly awarded and revered designer, artist, and storyteller in her field.”
Photo courtesy of SCAD
In 2021, the SCAD Savannah Film Festival honored Powell for her outstanding achievements in film costume design. From there, Gomes says, the art college and designer formed a close relationship that ultimately led to the new exhibit.
The show is designed cinematically, following a timeline of Powell’s life and highlighting the films that inspired her most iconic work. Each costume is displayed within an elevated black box that “mimics larger-than-life film cells,” says Gomes. Lit from beneath, with the lights focused on the clothing, they replicate the feeling of watching a movie in a theater.
Each costume display at SCAD FASH invites visitors into the scenes of Powell’s most influential projects. As guests walk in, they are immediately taken to the set of Caravaggio, Powell’s first feature film, which was released in 1986 and marked the beginning of her fruitful collaboration with director Derek Jarman.
Since then, she’s worked with some of the biggest names in film, including Martin Scorsese, Todd Haynes, and Yorgos Lanthimos, and costumed films ranging from The Wolf of Wall Street to Velvet Goldmine. Powell says she particularly enjoys working with directors who are interested in visual details: She told Rough Draft Atlanta that Martin Scorcese once instructed her to watch an entire French film just so she could see the stripe on an actor’s collar.
Working with Scorsese on films like The Aviator and Gangs of New York helped solidify Powell’s interest in costume styling using color theory. While curating her exhibition, Gomes noticed how much attention Powell gave to the colors of each piece of clothing.
“I noticed a recurring use of a particular shade of blue-green throughout Powell’s films. That’s a detail that one notices as they move through the show,” Gomes explains. “A great example is the train inspector costume worn by Sacha Baron Cohen in Hugo, which Powell designed in this specific shade so that the audience would visually gravitate to this character in crowded scenes.”
Photo courtesy of SCAD
Powell’s use of visual storytelling is apparent in her work in Todd Haynes’ 2015 film Carol, where she blends her designs into the fabric of the characters’ narratives. In a documentary that accompanies the SCAD FASH exhibit, Powell dives into a tan fur coat she created for Cate Blanchett, who plays the titular character as she grapples with her sexuality and failing marriage. “The one we actually used was pieced together by old bits of vintage coats, simply because I was determined to get the right color for her—because it’s Cate,” says Powell in the documentary. “It was very fragile. It split every single day of the shoot, so every day the costumer was underneath, sewing or taping up the splits.” This “sad coat,” she explains, exemplified Carol’s unraveling life. Just as she comes slightly undone in each scene, so does the fur she wears on her back.
To Gomes, such details are what make Sandy Powell a true visionary in the film industry and bring her creativity to life in a way that extends beyond clothing. The impact of her costumes is monumental, he says: “Her work in and of itself can be used as a source of fashion history.”
‘Sandy Powell’s Dressing the Part: Costume Design for Film’ is on view now at SCAD FASH through March 16, 2025.
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