Costume Spotlight: Australia

My costume critique for this week is on Lady Sarah Ashley, the lead female role played by Nicole Kidman, in the movie Australia. This movie is basically an Australian Western that takes place during World War II. Lady Ashley is the wife of a cattle station owner, and when her husband gets killed, she inherits the station in Australia. She leaves her home in England, and after discovering the death of her husband, she stays on the cattle station.

In the beginning of the film, Lady Ashley is very much an English woman. She arrives in Australia with many bags of luggage filled with clothes, and her own costume is very fitted with many buttons; she wears gloves, a skirt, and carries an umbrella.  Throughout the beginning, she continues to dress this way, but once she begins to help drive the cattle, her appearance changes. She starts to wear more earth-colored clothing, button-up shirts, pants, and she trades her girly hat for more of a cowboy hat. She continues to wear well-fitted clothing, but looks more like the owner of a cattle station instead of a woman from England. While she continues to fix her hair nicely, she does have some days while she's helping with the cattle where her hair is messy, she's dirty, and seems like a completely different person. Towards the end of the film with World War II approaching Australia, Lady Ashley begins to work answering the telephone/radio calls and wears an army green button up shirt and a dark green pencil skirt. The last costume she is seen in is a short-sleeved, button-up, floral blouse, along with a beige pencil skirt.

It's interesting to see how her costume changes reflect the changes in her personality. She starts out as a English woman with many clothes, trades those things to be a cattle driver, becomes part of the war efforts, and then returns to her lady-like clothing but without all of the over-the-top outfits. At the end of the film, she's still a lady, but her clothing is more breathable, comfortable, and less uptight. She has many experiences throughout the movie that change her personality in the same way.
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