Mommie Dearest Film Costumes
Last updated on July 14th, 2026 at 01:51 pm
- My Love For Joan Crawford
- Mommie Dearest Film Costumes in My Private Collection
- All The Other Costumes From Mommie Dearest film
- Book Review: With Love, Mommie Dearest: The Making of an Unintentional Camp Classic
I’m fortunate to have been brought up by a very glamorous and sophisticated mother, who at an early age, introduced me to the wonderful world of vintage Hollywood. I was mesmerised by the performances and beauty of such stars as; Veronica Lake, Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Rita Hayworth and particularly Joan Crawford, of whom I’ve read probably every biography that’s ever had pen put to paper. Of those, one caused huge controversy, its title is Mommie Dearest and it was written by her daughter Christina.
Christina Crawford is Joan’s adopted daughter, and her hugely controversial 1978 biography of her mother was turned into a 1981 film starring Faye Dunaway.
Mommie Dearest portrayed Joan as a cruel woman, an alcoholic and an abusive mother, an image that many of her adoring fans, myself included, have found difficult to believe. Nevertheless, the film has found a place in popular culture and for me, it’s been an inspiration set piece for my 1940s costuming and styling.
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In the ‘Joan Crawford: Always the Star’ documentary, the film director, Herbert Kenwith said this about Christina Crawford.
I think Christina was very, very envious of Joan Crawford and her public and her popularity and her beauty. Very envious. Joan Called me on many occasions to help Christina get a job as an actress, which I did on two ocasions. Joan did everything possible for that child. She wanted to be an actress, she wanted to be Joan Crawford.
Herbert Kenwith
My Love For Joan Crawford
Suffice it to say that I’m a huge fan of Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Marlene Dietrich and Katharine Hepburn. I find their acting talent, beauty and immaculate sense of style simply intoxicating.
I was about six years old when I first watched The Women (1939) and The Philadelphia Story (1940). And from that moment on, I was hooked on the Hollywood glamour that became the inspiration for my look. The hair, the make-up, and those magnificent gowns created by the most talented costume designers in Hollywood: Adrian, Edith Head, Orry-Kelly, and Irene Sharaff, helped transform every bland-looking actress into the most beautiful woman in the world. I so wanted to become THAT woman.
By the time I was a teenager, I’d seen almost every film with Crawford Davis, Hepburn and Hayworth. I learned from watching my favourite movie stars, with a similar look and body type to mine, what styles of clothes worked and which ones didn’t.
How fortuitous that my body is so similar, shape-wise, to my biggest style inspiration, not counting my mom, Joan Crawford. I used to hate my broad shoulders until I realised that they were almost identical in size to Crawford’s shoulders. Now, instead of trying to make them look smaller, I emphasize their size with the help of 1940s jackets.
Why am I sharing this with you? I want you to know that I love Joan Crawford and take the Mommie Dearest book and its film adaptation with more than a grain of salt. According to some of her closest friends, twin daughters, and Betty Barker, a private secretary of nearly 28 years, nothing in the book was true.
I must have been living in a different home. I never saw this happen.
Betty Barker
Let’s not forget that she was not the first or the last movie star portrayed by her child in a harsh, almost unbearable to read about manner.
This post is my tribute to Joan Crawford, the style icon, and my excitement about owning a couple of garments designed by the great costume designer, Irene Sharaff.
Mommie Dearest Film Costumes in My Private Collection
This extraordinary ice skating costume was worn by Faye Dunaway as my beloved Joan Crawford in the 1981 cult classic Mommie Dearest.
To this day, the story of how I came to own it feels completely and utterly surreal.
Many years ago, my husband and I visited Bonhams in London to view costumes ahead of an upcoming auction. I was happily admiring the various treasures on display when my eyes eventually landed on something quietly sitting in the corner of the room. I have a proclivity for spotting vintage treasures from across the room, so perhaps it was inevitable that I would notice it. There, almost overlooked, was an original Irene Sharaff creation!
Not simply a costume, but a piece of Hollywood history designed by one of the greatest costume designers who ever lived. As you can imagine, I immediately lost all ability to behave like a normal person.
The lovely woman working at Bonhams could clearly see exactly what was happening and kindly asked whether I would like to try it on. As if there was ever going to be another answer. It turned out that two costumes from Mommie Dearest were being sold as one lot.
To my complete astonishment, both dresses fitted me perfectly.
Not approximately.
Not with strategic pinning.
Perfectly!
I floated out of that building in a daze, absolutely enchanted by the experience and entirely convinced that I would never lay eyes on them again. Until the following day, when my husband casually announced that he had spent the entire auction secretly bidding online behind my back.
And then came the words I never expected to hear.
“We got them!!!”
He won.
Just like that, I somehow became the caretaker of two original Irene Sharaff costumes worn by Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest.
Even now, after all these years, it still feels faintly unbelievable.
After all, every vintage collector dreams of finding that one impossible piece.
Why? Well, one of the dresses was worn in what has become the seminal and arguably its most controversial scene of the film. It’s the ‘No wire hangers!’ dress that puts in an appearance when an off-the-scale with rage Joan returns home to beat her daughter senseless for hanging her clothes on a wire hanger.
No Wire Hangers Dress
Without further ado, I present the infamous ‘No Wire Hangers’ dress from the movie Mommie Dearest that is now in my proud possession. Photography, by Gregory Michael King.
“Be afraid of nothing.”
The Ice Follies of 1939
The other dress was worn in the opening scene of the film. In it, Joan is preparing for a dance scene in The Ice Follies of 1939. It’s a blue ice-skating outfit made from thousands of hand-sewn sequins and from what I’ve been told since meeting someone who worked in the costume department for Mommie Dearest, the hat alone for it was more expensive to make than many designer dresses of the day.
The reason for this? The perfectionist is the legendary Irene Sharaff, Chief Costume Designer for the film and whose last film work this was to be. Ms Sharaff created costumes for Hello Dolly!, The King and I, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, West Side Story and is second only to Edith Head in the Oscar count for film costume designing.
I’m wearing the original ice skating dress designed by Irene Sharaff and worn by Faye Dunaway in the film Mommie Dearest!
The wonderful little hat didn’t make the cut. Such a shame as it’s such a magnificent piece.
The front of the ice skating outfit that made 10 10-second appearance in the film Mommie Dearest. Please, forgive my awful long and unstyled hair.
All The Other Costumes From Mommie Dearest film
So many wonderful garments, I wish were now hanging in my closet.
Any woman who appears in public without being well-groomed is digging her own grave.
I think that the most important thing a woman can have, next to her talent, of course, is her hairdresse.
I was born in front of a camera and really don’t know anything else.
If you want to see the girl next door, go next door.
Care for your clothes like for the good friends they are.
Love is fire, but wheter it is going to warm your heart or burn down your house, you can never tell.
I’ve persuaded myself that I hate things that are bad for me-fattening food, late nights and loud and agressive peaople head the list. I’m friends with myself, so I do things that are good for me, otherwise I couldn’t be good for others.
Joan Crawford, My Way of Life
You might also be interested in my article on the Joan Crawford Inspired Look!
Book Review: With Love, Mommie Dearest: The Making of an Unintentional Camp Classic
The book I have been waiting for since 1981, the one that would finally answer every question I have ever had about the wardrobe, hair and make-up in Mommie Dearest, has at last materialised thanks to A. Ashley Hoff and his magnificent With Love, Mommie Dearest: The Making of an Unintentional Camp Classic. Like any great researcher, Hoff leaves no stone unturned in his pursuit of the facts, and the result is essential reading not only for the fans of the film, but for anyone fascinated by the extraordinary machinery required to bring a Hollywood legend back to life on screen.
For me, the revelations surrounding Irene Sharaff’s costumes alone were worth the price of admission. Freed from the constraints of a costume budget, Sharaff commissioned fabrics from England and France, employed embroiderers who had worked on Queen Elizabeth’s gowns, borrowed jewels from Cartier and Tiffany, and recreated Crawford’s wardrobe with an obsessive attention to detail that bordered on archaeological reconstruction. Remarkably, only one version of each costume existed, meaning every garment had to be handled with extraordinary care throughout filming.
One of the most fascinating revelations in Hoff’s book concerns the extraordinary lengths taken to recreate Joan Crawford’s silhouette with absolute authenticity. Although Irene Sharaff herself had worked under Adrian at MGM and knew his work intimately, Faye Dunaway proved to be every bit as formidable a guardian of Crawford’s image.
Having worn many original Adrian designs throughout her own career, Dunaway possessed an almost scholarly understanding of his tailoring, proportions and, perhaps most importantly, his legendary shoulders. When the London-made costumes arrived at Paramount, she immediately recognised that something was amiss.
The shoulder pads, despite the exceptional quality of the fabrics and workmanship, simply were not Adrian shoulders. As both a lifelong devotee of Joan Crawford’s on-screen wardrobe and a woman who spends most of her life wearing original 1940s skirt suits, I can attest that there are very few people on this planet who understand-or are perhaps quite as irrationally obsessed with-authentic vintage shoulder pads as I am. Their size, their pitch and their placement determine the entire architecture of a garment. Get them wrong and Joan Crawford ceases to be Joan Crawford.
Dunaway insisted they be removed and remade, creating no small amount of additional work for Sharaff and her team.
For lovers of costume history, it is precisely these sorts of details that make Hoff’s book such an indispensable and utterly irresistible read.
The book also finally solved a mystery that had puzzled me for years: why the spectacular Irene Sharaff ice-skating costume in my own collection, which reportedly cost thousands of dollars to create, appears on screen for scarcely more than a fleeting moment. Hoff reveals that an elaborate opening sequence centred around The Ice Follies of 1939 was abandoned after approximately $350,000 was slashed from the budget just days before filming began.
Have I piqued your interest? If the answer is yes, you can purchase the book by following the link below.
