Best costumes in a period movie 3/10

GONE WITH THE WIND

Walter Plunkett was the well known authority on period costumes in Hollywood during his time. He liked it because the directors who normally didn't know anything about period costumes let him do as he pleased without any argument. 
Walter first got the idea that he wanted to do the costume design for Gone With The Wind after Katherine Hepburn gave him the book to read because she too was interested in being apart of the movie as Scarlet O'Hara. After reading the book Plunkett got his agents to write to the producer David Selznick suggesting him as the costume designer.  
He was hired on the spot and started his research on the costumes. During preproduction the costumes he was creating were good for the smaller roles but Selznick didn't think they were sensational enough for Scarlet to wear in this costume epic. At this point Selznick contacted other costume designers including Murial King, G.E Calthrop, Ladislaw Czettel, and Adrian since Walter wasn't giving him the designs he wanted. King brought Selznick amazing designs but she only wanted to work on Scarlet's costumes and not the extras, as did many of the other designers. 
Walter was brought back to the project with new designs and they were exactly what Selznick was looking for. 
Since shooting with Technicolor was still a new process being used, Selznick really wanted the costumes in his costume epic to stand out and be the focus of the film. And with Walter Plunkett being so used to not being told what to do, I bet working on this movie has shown him that costumes are a very important part of a movie and even though he was the main authority on period costumes, it is the designers responsibility to do what the director wants and go in the direction that the director wants to go in in terms of costumes. 
Since the color of the costumes were extremely important I put a black and white photo next to some of the color photos to show just how important the color was to the movie and how much more of an impact the colors created in the story these costumes told. 

 Photo credit for the picture above

     Info credit 

http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/web/gwtw/wardrobe/plunkett/plunkett.html

Also while looking up information about the movie I came across this awesome Gone With The Wind blog!! http://gwtwscrapbook.blogspot.com/