The Talented Mr. Plunkett and the Costumes of Gone with the Wind

Walter Plunkett. Image from the Harry Ransom Center.

Excellent news for us Windies! Yesterday the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin announced that it had achieved its goal of raising $30,000 to preserve five of the original costumes worn by Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind, including the iconic green drapery and red party dresses. And what better way for us to celebrate than to tip our hat in tribute to the man behind the dresses, legendary costume designer Walter Plunkett? 

Given that our blog's header features no less than four of his GWTW sketches, it's probably no surprise to you that we're rather fond of Mr. Plunkett and his costumes around here. After all, Gone with the Wind simply wouldn't be the movie we all know and love without Plunkett's inspired work on costumes for everyone from Scarlett and Rhett on down. So today we're pleased to give Walter Plunkett his due with an exploration of his work, his legacy and of course his instrumental role in GWTW--complete with a slideshow of 53 of his original sketches.  

An Oakland, California native born in 1902, Walter Plunkett abandoned his law studies to begin first his Broadway and then his Hollywood career as a movie extra in the mid 1920s, before making the shift to costume design. His first credited costume design role came in 1927 for Hard-Boiled Haggerty by RKO Studios, where he served as the Head of the Wardrobe Department. There, Plunkett was given a great degree of latitude in his costume design and his star quickly rose within the industry. By the mid 1930s, he was already considered to be Hollywood's leading expert on historical costume, thanks to his work on several period films starring Katharine Hepburn.  It was in fact Hepburn who encouraged Plunkett to read Gone with the Wind. The rest, as they say, is history...

Plunkett read GWTW and was so captivated by the story that he immediately called his agents to request the job of costume designer on the film.  Selznick knew of and admired Plunkett's costumes from having worked with him on Little Women, and hired the designer on the spot. 

And in Plunkett, Selznick got an employee who shared his fanatical attention to detail--because meticulous is the only true way to describe Walter Plunkett's approach to costume design on GWTW. He read the book multiple times, checked and cross-checked every passage related to fashion, and put together a notation book of 200 pages(!) with quotes about costumes. 

Then he went to Atlanta to meet Margaret Mitchell, who provided him with several books for research and introduced him to fellow Atlanta ladies in possession of 1860-70s era clothing. While in Atlanta, MM also gave Plunkett a blessing of sorts: her permission to change the color of Scarlett's dresses, as in the book the dashing Miss O'Hara's wardrobe is almost exclusively green (Margaret Mitchell's favorite color). From Atlanta, Plunkett embarked on a tour of the museums of the South to gather more research and fabric samples, with stops in Charleston, Savannah, New Orleans and the Smithsonian Institute. 

Then, at last, he started to design. But after a first round of sketches, it seemed that, though his meticulous research was perfect for garbing all the roles that made the background of the movie, Plunkett did not have what it took for the dramatic flair of Scarlett's wardrobe, as envisioned by Selznick. "We will need somebody to give us perhaps half a dozen sensational costumes that will need to be original creations in addition to the Plunkett job - if it is Plunkett - which will be based largely on research," said the producer in a memo from February 1938. The favorite for this position seemed to be New York designer Muriel King whose sketch for a Scarlett costume had gained Margaret Mitchell's enthusiastic consent. 

But by January of 1939, as a Selznick memo noted, "Plunkett has come to life and turned in magnificent Scarlett costumes so we won't need anyone else." With this, the designer was given free reign with all the costumes.  The final sum of his work when all was done? 5,500 wardrobe items for a cost of $153,818 and a laundry bill of $10,000. A staggering output by any stretch of the imagination--not to mention one that includes some of the most memorable costumes to have ever graced the silver screen.  If the category existed back in 1939, Plunkett would have definitely won an Oscar for Best Costume Design. As it was, he won the prize for An American in Paris in 1951, and was nominated 9 other times.

Today, Walter Plunkett is widely remembered as one of the legends of cinematic costume design, largely due to his work on Gone with the Wind, though his record with other productions is impressive as well. Interestingly, though, there are some, like costume designer Frances Tempest, who dispute his reputation for exacting historical accuracy:

"A film always reflects the time when it is made regardless of when the story is set. This is unconscious and only becomes apparent after, say, ten years hindsight. Even when creating a faithful, historically accurate, reproduction of a particular era, after a few years the film will obviously belong to the 1970s, 1980s or whenever it was made. So GWTW belongs to 1939 and is in the tradition of other 30s historical dramas such as Little Women. To our eyes these films look ‘very 1930s’. I am sure the film-makers thought they were accurately reproducing 19th-century society. With Europe on the brink of war GWTW creates a fantasy Deep South. Walter Plunkett has tapped into the zeitgeist, and mined a rich vein of nostalgia, to a world that never actually existed. "

--remarks by Frances Tempest, excerpted from Fashion, Media, Promotion: The New Black Magic By Jayne Sheridan

We don't deny the idea that films reflect the time period in which they are made, or that GWTW is in many ways a product of 1930s-era Hollywood glamour (it's the poster child for that, after all). However, we do take issue with the last claim that Plunkett created a vision of "a world that never actually existed." In fact, our own research has turned up just the opposite--Plunkett's costumes were incredibly grounded in period fashion, so much so that it can be quite eerie at times to find a Plunkett dress staring at you from an issue of Godey's Lady's Book. 

And to that end, we're taking this opportunity to announce a new series, Doppelganger Dresses, where we'll highlight real dresses from period fashion plates that bear close resemblance to the costumes of Gone with the Wind. Stay tuned... our first Doppelganger dress will be up later this week. And for now? Enjoy a lovely GWTW slideshow, of course! 




For more info on GWTW costumes, be sure to check out the invaluable Harry Ransom GWTW online costume exhibition and its Walter Plunkett page, which includes costume-related correspondence from the making of GWTW.