Fashion and the Female Spectator in Hitchcock’s Vertigo

In Alfred Hitchcock’s psychological thriller Vertigo (1958), dress is essential to the uncanniness of the film. Through the use of obscure color combinations, contrasting textures and reoccurring garments, clothing acts as a reflection of the film’s themes of anxiety and acrophobia. However, by examining the dress of Kim Novak’s character, Madeleine, and later Judy, we begin to understand how the female spectator is prioritized in this male domineering film genre. While horror films typically rely on the male gaze and the mutilation and fragmentation of the female, in Vertigo the female gaze is undeniably important. Madeleine’s dress is a manipulative force in its own right and the power and symbolism behind her clothing simultaneously allures the female viewer while discomforting her by signifying notions of suspense, death and deception.

Color Play

Firstly, the importance of color is essential to comprehending the significance and capabilities of dress in the film. In the scene where Scottie first surveilles Madeleine at Ernie’s restaurant, her long emerald green shawl deeply contrasts the crimson red wallpaper of the restaurant. Madeleine is wearing a black evening dress accompanied with black gloves. The combination of black and green is an odd choice for a female character as the colors insinuates rather dark emotions; death, envy or sickness. The palate of greens and reds is also seen throughout the film, and with colors opposite the color wheel, it creates a sensation of discomfort.

Madeleine at Ernie’s Restaurant, Vertigo (1958)

We witness this color pattern again when Madeleine is saved by Scottie after jumping into the Bay, she is given a bright red robe to wear as her clothing dries. Scottie in turn is wearing a pale green sweater. Both are demanding colors and attract the spectator’s eye. Yet, when Madeleine is given the robe, the spectator is equally focusing on the striking garment as she is with the heaviness of the scene itself. Hence, these color choices initiate a dialogue in which the female spectator participates within. Furthermore, Jane Gaines offers in Costume and Narrative: How Dress Tells the Woman’s Story, “Color, like costume detail, could become clutter on the screen unless restricted and held to its character identification function” (Gaines 193). Vertigo is able to avoid the cluttering that Gaines suggests could derail the spectator by using these colors to draw attention to its characters and add to the plot itself. The use of such strange colors seeks to emblemize the tones of the film. Just as green can relay life or vitality, it can epitomize nausea. Likewise, red can stand to symbolize love and desire as it can embody blood. These colors when attached to Madeleine are powerful and allow her to present as a femme fatale, attracting Scottie as well as the female spectator.

The arguably most recognizable garment in Vertigo is Madeleine’s grey suit. She is first seen wearing it by Scottie the day after surveilling her at Ernie’s. He follows her into a flower shop, peeking behind a door. As a voyeur, the spectator accompanies Scottie on this investigation, peering at a woman who emits a ghostly appearance. Her ‘Hitchcock Blonde’ hair remains stiff in a swirl contrasting the grey. The combination, like the previous red and green, is unsettling. Like an eyesore, she remains visible to the viewer and is recognizable by this staple suit. In Clothes on Film, “Costume & Identity in Hitchcock’s Vertigo”, Iris Veysey argues that:

Madeleine’s style has a bold simplicity, typified by her grey suit. Comprised of a pencil skirt and single-breasted jacket, the suit has three covered buttons, notched lapels, cuffs and two flap pockets. Two versions of the skirt were made with knife pleats for ease of movement. In its first appearance Madeleine couples the suit with a simple white blouse, black handbag, fur stole, lavender grey gloves and black stiletto heels. Her make-up is minimal and jewelry limited to a small brooch. The effect is ladylike yet severe (Veysey).

Scottie surveilling Madeleine at a flower shop, Vertigo (1958)

This description details the very allure this suit gives the female spectator. Her appearance is feminine and beautiful, yet there is something so jarring and stringent about it. Madeleine’s character is molded by her garments as she exhibits the same elusiveness and detachment as her grey suit. Yet, the grey suit remains the signifier of Madeleine’s character, so much so, that when Scottie eventually encounters Judy, he needs her to wear the exact grey suit that Madeleine had. In this sense, the suit is almost more important than Madeleine herself. Veysey writes that “When Scottie attempts to dress Judy as Madeleine, he is trying to resurrect a dead woman. (Veysey). In addition, before meeting Judy, Scottie feels as if he has spotted Madeleine at the museum and later walking to her car, yet both times they were women in similar grey suits with blond hair. In both instances, like Scottie, the spectator is also expecting the women to be Madeleine based on the attire, but is also let down. The grey suit not only exists to amplify the uncanniness and mystery of the film and of Madeleine herself, but is seen almost as a code in which the assumed female spectator is able to pick up on. The spectator can read the garment and understand its cinematic value while simultaneously lusting after it.

Costume as Speech and Luxury Fabrics

Yet, dress in Vertigo does not exist merely as a character trait, but more so is able to convey what speech does not. Gaines describes Edith Head’s perspective on the matter by writing, “Edith Head, who began work at Paramount after the silent era, has insisted that costume should carry enough information about characters so that the audience could tell something about them if the sound went off in the theatre” (Gaines 188). Head was the costume designer for the film and in that sense, one can see the ways in which Madeleine’s costume, and later Judy’s dressing can speak for themselves and add layers to the plot.

A poignant scene in Vertigo is when Madeleine is at the museum, looking at the painting of Carlotta Valdes whilst wearing the grey suit. There is no speech but the spectator is able to note that by way of Madeleine’s attire and body gestures, she is mimicking the painting with her rolled up blonde hair and by holding the exact flower bouquet. Through the close-ups of the painting and references back to Madeleine’s attire, the spectator is able to gain insight about Madeleine’s intentions and ghostly behavior by way of her appearance. Gaines argues that “Not only did costume, like décor, provide iconographic cues related to typage and narrative conventions; in the absence of sound it was seen as a substitute for speech” (Gaines 188). This holds true as most of the scenes in Vertigo are from a voyeuristic viewpoint and lack dialogue between characters. Veysey adds that in this mute museum scene, “No dialogue is necessary. Madeleine’s appearance is enough to persuade both the audience and Scottie that something is terribly wrong” (Veysey). So, due to the silence, the clothing fulfills the role of what is to be said and speaks to the spectator, increasing the haunting effect of Madeleine and the film’s plot all together.

Alongside color, Vertigo consciously utilizes fabric to enhance Madeleine’s presence and prioritize the female spectator. The fabrics she wears are luxurious and the matching gloves and scarves assemble her poised persona. The luxury materials used in her outfits and accessories such as silk and fur demand attention in the frame and are desired by the female spectator. Gaines writes, “For on bodies of the female heroines, such fabrics as lame, silk velvet, duchesse satin and chiffon, simulate skin and thus seem to render tangible an emotional hypersensitivity” (Gaines 205). This emotional hypersensitivity demonstrated by the use of such delicate, feminine and fetishized fabrics is able to manipulate what Scottie, and consequently the spectator, perceive of Madeleine’s character. She is seen as a distraught woman, with a “ghost” stuck in her body. She is helpless but charming. Dangerous but alluring. The female spectator therefore takes note of what seems to be constructing Madeleine’s attractive persona; in this case it is what fabrics are worn, how her garments styled and what accessories is she using that can be easily replicated. In “Costume and Film”, Tamar Jeffords McDonald writes,

Dissatisfaction with ourselves, as audience members, works to support the cinema infrastructure in two ways; it makes us want to consume the images of more perfect female stars on screen, and to attempt to emulate their perfection and improve ourselves through the consumption of the purchasable products (McDonald 33).

Through Madeleine’s poised, yet femme fatale likened character, the female spectator is drawn to emulate her persona which is tangled through her wardrobe. Items as minimal as her black scarf accessory and black gloves she wears in many scenes can be easily replicated by the female spectator.

The Pygmalion Myth and Dress

Next, it is essential to explore Judy’s role regarding dress and the implications of her dress transformation. When Scottie first spots Judy, she is wearing a vibrant green soft cashmere sweater with a polka dotted shirt underneath, accompanied by a matching flowy green skirt. She has minimal jewelry and dirty blonde hair that is let down. Veysey speaks to this contrast by writing, “Embracing a provocative, more overtly sexualized appearance, Judy’s clothes cling to her body, showing off her shape. Exacerbating this, Novak wore no bra as Judy, the shape of her breasts clearly visible beneath her clothes” (Veysey). In contrast to Madeleine’s grey suit, her style is open and less restrictive, which is reflected by her blunt and active personality.

Judy in her apartment, Vertigo (1958)

Overall, Judy’s look is lively but disrupts the reality of Scottie, for he has seen, in his mind, a doppelgänger of his true love. Vesey offers that this desire to transform her derives from Madeleine’s constructed identity and fetishism through her clothing, and that “For Scottie, Madeleine is inseparable from her clothing” (Veysey). It is not enough that Judy looks like Madeleine, but more so he must drape her in the exact fabrics and colors that she once inhabited.

McDonald examines the transformative aspects of Hollywood Films and the difference between the Cinderella trope and the Pygmalion myth. She writes, “In the Pygmalion story, the man is the creator of a beautiful statue with whom he falls in love; while the goddess Venus animates her, it is the man himself who has wrought the thing he desires” (McDonald 26, 27). She then continues to write that films containing such transformations, citing Vertigo, often use a series of images to show the progress. She offers, “There is a similar continuity in the filmic strategies for rendering the altercations, which frequently draw on this ‘before’ and ‘after’ idea and omit, as did the early artists, the ‘during’” (McDonald 28). Scottie suffers from the Pygmalion myth, needing to replicate his true desire and thus begins the transformation of Judy into Madeleine again.

Like McDonald mentions, the spectator is not given this ‘during’ period but rather a scene where Scottie is hell-bent on finding the exact grey suit Madeleine wore and then the final results. He is assured by a hair stylist that everything will be taken care of, referencing dying her hair a colder, platinum blonde, but we the spectator is not taken into the salon. Next, without witnessing any transformation, the film cuts to Judy’s apartment and an uncanny resemblance of Madeleine appears, accompanied by a fog and a blank stare. Not only is she dressed as Madeleine but she is exhibiting her ghostly attributes nonetheless. She turns in the green light, and through the darkness of the room, her side profile is illuminated by neon green. Here the green of the light represents the nauseous green Madeleine projected, rather than the lively one of Judy. The transformation is complete but inorganic.

Judy as Madeleine, Vertigo (1958)

It is clear that the film ends tragically; as Scottie exposes Madeleine’s fake death and how her whole persona was a fabrication, his fantasy is shattered. Yet, what is important about this ending is that he discovers this revelation through Judy accessorizing with the large red pendant necklace Madeleine wore to mimic Carlotta Valdes. The piece is the signifier for the horror to come and unleashes the psychological trauma onto Scottie. In this sense, it seems that the jewelry itself holds the disturbing nature of the film’s ending. Scottie announces to Madeleine that she shouldn’t keep souvenirs of a killing, and it is then that she realizes her grave mistake. The necklace exposes Madeleine’s identity and leads to her inevitable death, once again proving that garments and dress hold significant influence in the events of the film.

All in all, Vertigo demonstrates how powerful and destructive dress can be. As easily as it can bring pleasure, it can equally haunt and lead to sinister actions. The female spectator is drawn into this often male dominated genre of psychological thrillers and horror by way of dress, through idolizing Novak and by noticing how her fashion is able to entrance Scottie. Lastly, by way of intentional color combinations, fabrics and repetition, dress in Vertigo is one of the most powerful and driving forces in the film.

Sources:

Gaines, Jane. Costume and Narrative: How Dress Tells the Woman’s Story

Hitchcock, Alfred, director. Vertigo. Paramount Pictures Corp., 1958.

McDonald, Tamar Jeffers. “Costume and Film.” Hollywood Catwalk: Exploring Costume and

Transformation in American Film, I.B. Tauris, 2010, pp. 15–39.

Veysey, Iris. “Costume & Identity in Hitchcock's Vertigo.” Clothes on Film, 30 Apr. 2018,

clothesonfilm.com/costume-identity-in-hitchcocks-vertigo/.