From Prada suits to pink hair - we analyse why costume the fashion codes in Baz Luhrmann's legendary 1996 take on the Shakespeare classic still feel fresh and exciting - 25 years since its release:
, for which the esteemed editor was interviewing Baz Luhrmann, O'Brien asked the director:"How do you make the un-makeable deal?". Though Luhrmann's films have grossed hundreds of millions of dollars, there is something incredulous about each of them. The executive producer of his first feature,, died suddenly during production — throwing the fate of the 1992 romantic comedy about the competitive world of ballroom dancing into perilous uncertainty .
But Luhrmann's most"un-makeable deal"; the biggest"how did this movie actually happen" moment? His two-hour, action-packed, star-studded blockbuster in which the only words spoken are Elizabethan English:. The 1996 sensation more than succeeded in its aims of refashioning Shakespeare for the MTV generation. It brought in $147.5 million by soundtracking sonnets to Radiohead and Garbage, and outfitting the Montagues and Capulets in Prada and D&G.
There have been plenty of wildly popular adaptations of Shakespeare's tale of star-crossed lovers, from. Yet these successful riffs don't ever retain its"thine's" and"thou's." Luhrmann, who developed his sumptuous dramatic style working in theatre and opera, didn't dream of backing down from the Bard's original language, but sought to construct a unique universe for it to live in anew.
When Luhrmann described this generational divide, he did so with designers. The senior Montagues and Capulets, he said,"have more of the 1960s-1970s-Yves-St.-Laurent-Jackie-O. look about them, whereas the younger generation has rejected that." That rejection takes two distinct forms: for the Capulet clique — led by John Leguizamo as Tybalt, the Prince of Cats, it meant