The Wearing of the Green

The Movie: “A Little Princess.”

The Setup: When her father is called to serve in World War I, a wealthy young girl, Sara Crewe (Liesel Matthews, pictured right), is sent from her home in India to a strict New York boarding school.

The Costume Designer: Judianna Makovsky, whose credits include “Reversal of Fortune,” “Big,” “Six Degrees of Separation” and “The Quick and the Dead.”

The Look: If you ask your children, “What’s unusual/weird/different about this picture?” the answer should be that there’s an awful lot of green. That includes the school’s window coverings, walls and upholstery as well as the clothing worn by everyone inside. In contrast to the whites and intense colors of India she leaves behind, Sara must adapt to life in a one-color world, or at least shades thereof including apple, forest, moss, heather and khaki. Cruel headmistress Miss Minchin (Eleanor Bron) wears severe high-necked dresses in a nasty shade of black-green (accessorized with a beastly mink head muff), while Captain Crewe dons suits, ties and waistcoats in pleasant variations of gray-green. Actually, the eccentric palette, insisted upon by director Alfonso Cuaron, doesn’t come off as too cutesy at all.

Inspiration: “The director said, ‘The movie’s green. What do you think about that?’ I said, ‘Actually, that’s an exciting challenge.’ Halfway through the movie, I said, ‘Maybe next time we can pick another color.’ But he said that all his films were green and he mostly wears green. It’s a palette he understands,” Makovsky explained. She, however, decided that unless she could throw in some other color she wouldn’t take the job. And she won--the girls’ boots are black as is the collar on Miss Minchin’s dress, among other details.

Quoted: “I wanted the clothes to look like every little girl would like to wear, like party frocks. That is what children’s clothes looked like then. Even simple day dresses from the ‘20s had embroidery all over them. It’s a little girls’ film and we wanted girls to respond to it,” the designer said.

Scene Stealers: The little girls’ uniforms are everything they need to be--sweet apple green, drop-waist dresses worn with polka dot cotton lawn pinafores and massive silk taffeta bows. Filling out their wardrobes are hunter green velvet caplet coats with matching berets and pale ecru and light green floral cotton nightgowns. Upon her return to India, Sara walks off in a luscious embroidered cream-colored coat.

You Should Know: The glowing fabrics for Indian costumes were made from silk saris found in Artesia, where there is a large Indian community. Slippers for Sara and her friend Becky (Vanessa Lee Chester, pictured left) also were found in the area.

Sources: Most of the non-Indian fabrics came from England, and the principals’ costumes were custom-made at various costume houses in Los Angeles.