Orlando

Orlando is an extraordinary film and a particularly rich costume drama.

Sally Potter’s adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, starring Tilda Swinton, spans several centuries of Orlando’s life. The story begins towards the end of Elizabeth I’s reign, with Orlando as a young aristocrat, and continues through ever-changing eras without him seeming to age. At regular intervals, Orlando falls into a deep, almost magical sleep and wakes in a new time. After one of these sleeps, he wakes as a woman…

The film is divided into distinct historical chapters, with each new year bringing a new setting and wardrobe. This makes Orlando an especially rich costume film, giving costume designer Sandy Powell the chance to explore hundreds of years of European fashion in a single film. Elizabethan dress is gradually replaced by the voluminous shapes of the Rococo period, before the film moves through the 19th century and right up to Potter’s own time in the early 1990s. Historical cuts are mixed with modern materials, proportions are stretched and exaggerated, and the clothes often take on a theatrical quality that suits the film’s slightly unreal relationship with time.

Orlando is exceptionally beautiful to look at, and much of the experience lies in watching the centuries pass through the clothes. Powell’s costumes earned her her first Oscar nomination, and the film has since become one of the great reference points for costume cinema.

The film will be introduced by Morteza Vaseghi, Head of Design at International Library of Fashion Research.