Gary Oldman in BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA (1992) dir. Francis Ford Coppola
I Will forever defend casting and costuming choices for this movie btw even when I dislike the narrative choices.
The little round sunglasses? That embroidered suit? It’s giving extravagant dandy, which I imagine is what Dracula would have wanted to look like when in London (jury’s out on whether or not he managed, see also: straw hat). The symbolic use of green and red is so good too.
Also: many jokes have been made about Dracula’s butt hair at the beginning but it’s worth noting that it’s actually a solution to a problem. When he welcomes Jonathan to his castle, Dracula is wearing luxurious and beautiful but very old and outdated clothing. However, if the costume department had put him in a *somewhat* outdated fit, say 1750-ish, modern viewers might not have been able to see the difference immediately, even if to Jonathan it would have been obvious at first glance. To solve this, the costume designer decided to go *very* outdated. Dracula is wearing a straight up Reinassance fit. The haircut would have been all the rage three or so centuries prior, even considering the slower moving of fashion in a relatively peripheric, and what reads to us as a fancy bathrobe is actually a outdoor cape with golden embroidery that also looks like the sort of thing you’d see on a nobleman of that period. The superwhite skin and lack of eyebrows could be vampire aging but could also reflect the use of white powder on the skin, another thing that had long since fallen out of fashion. The fit is incongruous enough that it reads in the same way to Jonathan and to us. It’s actually very clever.
