#Renee Ehrlich Kalfus

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Kerry Washington as Professor Dovey in The School for Good and Evil (Film, 2022).

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Agatha (Sofia Wylie) Pink, floral ballgown.. The School For Good and Evil (2022).. Costume by Renee Ehrlich Kalfus.

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Costumes For Anna Kendrick As Stephanie Smothers And Blake Lively As Emily Nelson

A Simple Favor

Designed By Renee Ehrlich Kalfus

27th Art Of Motion Picture Costume Design

FIDM Museum And Galleries

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A Simple Favor 2018, dir. Paul Feig Costume design by Renée Ehrlich Kalfus

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Q: How did the director’s behind-the-scenes style end up influencing Blake Lively’s on-screen look?

A: Blake’s character Emily Nelson is this PR maven, a really, really stylish and powerful New York woman. At first, part of me didn’t want to cover up this beautiful girl with these beautiful legs but I started brainstorming with Blake and she said that [her character] should dress like Paul. I think it was, “Exactly like Paul — full-on men’s suiting!” After she said that, we both got really giddy because, of course, it was the perfect idea.

Q: What made it such a perfect idea?

A: That [Emily’s] this incredibly devious woman [living] in the [Connecticut] suburbs. She’s completely out of place and doesn’t give a hoot. She could[n’t] care less about fitting in, and [the suits] just seemed like an extremely powerful and very iconic way to go about [showing] that.

That was one of the reasons it just clicked. Emily Nelson is just like Paul [Feig is] or Tom Wolfe [was]. They’re saying, “This is who I am and I’m never going to try and be like those other people.” I think there’s always a reason, a deeper mind set, why somebody’s [dressing] like that. You’re either branding yourself, protecting yourself or disguising yourself. And there’s some armor to that too.

- The Los Angeles Times interview with costume designer Renée Ehrlich Kalfus

Blake Lively (in suits) as Emily Nelson in A SIMPLE FAVOR (2018)

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28/? costume design: Hidden Figures by Renee Ehrlich Kalfus

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Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monae as Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson

Film: Hidden Figures (2016)

Costumes by Renee Ehrlich Kalfus

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La La Land, Hidden Figures and Doctor Strange were among the movies whose costumes won at the Costume Designers Guild Awards 2017. Here is the complete list of winners. Congratulations!

Excellence in Contemporary Film: Mary Zophres for La La Land

Excellence in Period Film: Renee Ehrlich Kalfus for Hidden Figures

Excellence in Fantasy Film: Alexandra Byrne for Doctor Strange

Outstanding Contemporary Television Series: Lou Eyrich and Helen Huang for American Horror Story: Roanoke

Outstanding Period Television Series: Michele Clapton for The Crown

Outstanding Fantasy Television Series: Michele Clapton and April Ferry for Game of Thrones

Excellence in Short Form Design: Ami Goodheart for Pepsi Momotaro feat. Jude Law

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The costume designer for this film was Renee Ehrlich Kalfus, who has an impressive imdb history which includes costume design for Hidden Figures and Chocolat, among many others.

#for science

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Julianne Moore in The Shipping News (2001)

Direction: Lasse Hallström

Costumes: Renée Ehrlich Kalfus

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How ‘Hidden Figures’ Costume Designer Used Fashion to Bring an Untold Story to Light

Only three weeks after opening, Hidden Figures is still going strong, grossing over $64 million at the box office so far and garnering critical acclaim. The film tells the untold story of three African-American women — Katherine G. Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe) — who worked as mathematicians at NASA and made history with the launch of American astronaut John Glenn into Earth’s orbit in 1962. All of this is accomplished while tearing down racial and gender stereotypes during the civil rights era.

Of course, the movie’s period-perfect outfits also garnered a lot of attention. Responsible for the cast’s costume design was Renee Ehrlich Kalfus. She proved that the work of a costume designer is far from just playful imagination; it requires a level of dedication and historical accuracy. “The fact that [this story] was untold — we all came to it just plain not knowing about it. How did we not know this? It’s a remarkable thing,” Kalfus told Yahoo Style on first joining the team for the movie.

Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe), Katherine G. Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) and Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) celebrate their stunning achievements in one of the greatest operations in history. (Photo: Hopper Stone/Twentieth Century Fox)

To research the era and the types of dress the characters needed, Kalfus delved into NASA archives and footage, and explored photos taken in the South during the civil rights era, family albums, and vintage Ebony magazines.

“First you do the extensive research,” Kalfus told Yahoo Style. “That time was well-documented. It was the early ’60s. We had a specialist from NASA. We used yearbooks. We had Katherine’s home pictures. We had all the protests and the march. We were able to research that time. That’s where it starts.”

Taraji P. Henson as Katherine Johnson in Hidden Figures. (Photo: Hopper Stone/Twentieth Century Fox)

Equipped with info on the time period, she was able to conceptualize and bring to life the wardrobes of Johnson, the math genius; Vaughan, NASA’s first African-American female supervisor; and Jackson, the agency’s first African-American female engineer (who also was the first African-American to take classes at Hampton High School, an all-white high school, to receive credits that would make her eligible to become an engineer).  

With strict and conservative dress codes for women in the NASA programs — skirt lengths were regulated and no jewelry was allowed except for one pearl necklace — Kalfus had to find the balance between abiding by the rules of the time while still highlighting style. “I wanted to bump up [their style] so that you admired these women, and you want to be that person on the screen,” said Kalfus.

Taraji P. Henson as Katherine G. Johnson in Hidden Figures. (Photo: Hopper Stone/Twentieth Century Fox)

It was those choices that challenged Kalfus to distinguish Johnson from her co-workers on the NASA task force team, a group of white males who dressed uniformly and conservatively. Those who have seen the movie will recall Johnson’s first day on the job, when she’s handed a trashcan — having been mistaken for the janitor and not the math genius that she was. “She was a single mom with three kids working at NASA full-time, and she sewed her own clothing,” Kalfus remarked. “She went from demure to a more definitive, stronger character. She always knew the numbers. Now she got the chance to stand out.” Kalfus wanted to ensure that Johnson’s distinction wasn’t made just by the color of her skin but by her style choices at work too.

“We saw a lot of images of this space test group room, and they’re all in this one shirt, and I said, ‘Let’s put them all in gray jackets and make it really monochromatic,'” Kalfus told the Hollywood Reporter. “Because the women were in a whole other area of NASA. They were not near anybody, and they were segregated from one another. So when she does come in, she’s just this pop of color. It was the way we wanted to tell the story.”

Octavia Spencer stars as Dorothy Vaughan in Hidden Figures. (Photo: Hopper Stone/Twentieth Century Fox)

For Dorothy, Kalfus dressed up Spencer in polished nudes and earthy tones to suggest her ranking and career ambition. “The dresses were to the knee. They had to wear hose and heels,” according to Kalfus. “It was a very conservative time. Things fit in a certain way. But we brought in jewel tones.” Since Dorothy was very political and had a plan to accelerate her career as well as her team’s, Kalfus made sure she dressed the part.

Taraji P. Henson as Katherine G. Johnson and Janelle Monáe as Mary Jackson in Hidden Figures. (Photo: Hopper Stone/Twentieth Century Fox)

For Mary, a feisty and aspirational woman fighting for the opportunity to be an engineer for NASA, Kalfus curated a less structured, colorful, and feminine wardrobe to represent her personality and challenge to convention. “It was about building characters, these three women who really lived this life, and imagining how this would take place on the NASA campus. I wanted to build all the costumes and get a lot of vintage stuff on Mary.” To give Mary a true vintage feel, Kalfus worked to gather unsold clothes from vintage shops and thrift stores. 

Katherine G. Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) and her fellow mathematicians meet John Glenn (Glen Powell). (Photo: Hopper Stone/Twentieth Century Fox)

Though Kalfus’s vision was broad, she was working with a small budget. “It was a challenge,” Kalfus said. “It’s a small-budget movie. We had a very limited amount of money and time. It was a challenge to get all that done.” That led Kalfus to think outside the box and find ways to get the most bang for her buck. The majority of the clothes sets were handmade and donated from vintage and thrift stores around the country. Each had to be individually crafted for the role and the time period, to add to the larger picture.

Despite all the work Kalfus dedicated to the style choices for the movie, she reminds us, “It’s not a flashy movie. It’s regular people who are extraordinary people.” Whether you were familiar with these women before or not, Hidden Figures illustrates what happens when tenacity meets resilience in the face of adversity. “Everybody was very excited about this untold story,” Kalfus said. As we celebrate these remarkable women that forever changed the face of mathematics and science, we can also celebrate what it looks like when you do it with style.

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Kerry Washington as Professor Dovey in The School for Good and Evil (Film, 2022).

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Emily Nelson (Blake Lively) Blue floral dress.. A Simple Favor (2018).. Costume by Renee Ehrlich Kalfus.

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Costumes For Taraji P. Henson As Katherine G. Johnson Hidden Figures Costume Design- Renee Ehrlich Kalfus 25th Annual Art Of Motion Picture Costume Design Exhibit At FIDM

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2017 Costume Designers Guild Award Nominations Excellence in Period Film The Dressmaker - Marion Boyce and Margot Wilson Florence Foster Jenkins - Consolata Boyle Hail, Caesar! - Mary Zophres Hidden Figures - Renee Ehrlich Kalfus Jackie - Madeline Fontaine

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Last Christmas (2019) Costume design by Renee Ehrlich Kalfus