Costume and Character: Danilo Donati / Fellin's 'Roma' (1972)

Here are some of the influentially extravagant, high camp costumes designed by Italian costume designer Danilo Donati (1926-2001).  Donati designed many costumes (as well as sets) for the great Italian directors Federico Fellini and Pier Paolo Pasolini, amongst others. These are works created for Fellini's 'Roma' (1972), in which life in Rome is depicted and contrasted in the 1940s and the 1970s -  it's a poetic historical essay, rich in satire. 

This is the famous Catholic fashion show scene towards the end of 'Roma',  in which many more of Donati's costumes can be seen:

Costume and Character: Vintage Halloween Photos

It's a couple of days after Halloween already, but I've just found some really creepy and fascinating old photographs of Halloween costumes and masks from the first half of 20th century America.  These are all courtesy of a book by Ossian Brown called 'Haunted Air' (see here for details). 

The handmade, amateur quality of these costumes and masks has a real aesthetic of its own.  They're infinitely more disturbing than most mass-produced popular-culture plastic Halloween masks.  Somehow they seem to connect more strongly with the liminal moment of Halloween.  Halloween was originally called Samhein, celebrated by the Celts who lived in Britain, Ireland and France 2000 years ago, before the Roman invasion.  It was the original New Year's Eve - the new year beginning, for the Celts, on November 1st - and it was believed that the membrane separating the living and the dead became more permeable on this night, that the dead could return to the Earth.

It all puts me in mind of Leatherface, from Tobe Hooper's 1974 classic 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre'