“The Princess Diaries” Firehouse

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My friend Nat is a definite hostess with the mostest.  When I last visited her in San Francisco in October 2016, she not only had champagne chilling in the fridge, but an itinerary of area stalking locales she thought might interest me compiled and mapped out on her phone.  The spot on the list I was most excited about seeing was former Engine Company No. 43, where Mia Thermopolis (Anne Hathaway) lived with her mom, Helen (Caroline Goodall), and cat, Fat Louis, in 2001’s The Princess Diaries.  This stalker loves herself any adaptive reuse and in person, the firehouse-turned-home did not disappoint.  Somehow I forgot to blog about the place after returning home from my trip, though, and was not reminded of it until last Thursday when Mandy Moore, who played meanie cheerleader Lana Thomas in the film, posted a #tbt image of The Princess Diaries July 2001 premiere on Instagram.  Seeing the photo brought me right back to the day I stalked the firehouse and I figured there was no time like the present to finally blog about it.

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The Mission Revival-style Engine Company No. 43 was originally built in 1911, back when firemen were still fighting blazes via horse-drawn carriages.

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Following its decommission, the 4,800-square-foot wood frame structure was sold to a private buyer at a surplus auction in 1976 and subsequently transformed into a residence.

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Today, the unique homestead boasts 8 rooms, 2 stories, a 340-square-foot outbuilding that initially housed Company No. 43’s kitchen, a double 0.11-acre lot, parking for 4+ cars, and original detailing throughout including a fireman’s pole.

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The residence last hit the market in late 2014 with an asking price of $2.6 million (at the time it was being utilized as a 2-unit rental property) and was sold the following March for $1.85 million.  That’s quite a bargain to call The Princess Diaries firehouse home, if you ask me!

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Engine Company No. 43 pops up numerous times throughout the film.

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In person, the place still looks much the same as it did onscreen 17 years ago.

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Only the front exterior of the structure is featured in the movie.

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The home’s massive side staircase also makes a couple of appearances.

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Because those scenes were shot from the backyard, I was, obviously, unable to snap any photos matching the angle shown in the flick.  But I was thrilled to see that the staircase is visible from the street.

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The interior of Mia and Helen’s pad was nothing more than an elaborate set built inside of a soundstage a good 350 miles away at Walt Disney Studios in Burbank.  You can check out some fabulous photos of it on art director Caty Maxey’s website.

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Engine Company No. 43’s actual interior (which you can see here) is a far cry from its onscreen counterpart.  While Mia and Helen’s home is colorful and lovingly cluttered, the firehouse’s real life inside is sophisticated and minimalist.  I honestly can’t decide which I like better.

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Interestingly, while The Princess Diaries was set in San Francisco, not much of the movie was shot there.  Along with Engine Company No. 43, the Anthony R. Grove High School exterior (which Nat took me to stalk many moons ago) can also be found in the City by the Bay at 2601 Lyon Street in Cow Hollow.  The school’s courtyard scenes were lensed a bit closer to home, though, at Alverno Heights Academy in Sierra Madre, which I blogged about here.

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Big THANK YOU to my friend Nat for telling me about and taking me to this location!  Smile

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

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Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: Engine Company No. 43, aka The Princess Diaries firehouse, is located at 724 Brazil Avenue in San Francisco’s Excelsior District.

Jules’ House from “The Intern”

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For our recent Big Apple vacation, the Grim Cheaper and I took a red eye into New York, leaving Palm Springs at 11 p.m. and landing in NYC at 6:30 a.m.  Working off zero sleep, we were obviously exhausted upon arrival (me especially considering the copious amounts of calming drugs I ingested to curtail my flight anxiety), but obviously were not able to check into our hotel at such an early hour.  So what else were we to do, but head out for some stalking?  (And major props to the GC for going all-in with me that day.  Despite the lack of sleep and even after we were informed that our room was ready, we decided to stay up the rest of the day and stalked from one end of the city to the other!  “We can sleep when we’re dead” pretty much became our trip motto.)  For our first foray, we ventured over to Brooklyn so that I could see one of the locales I was most excited about – the house where Jules (Anne Hathaway) lived with her husband, Matt (Anders Holm), and daughter, Paige (JoJo Kushner), in The Intern.  The romcom was easily my favorite movie of 2015 (I’ve literally watched it about twenty times since it came out) and Jules’ charming brownstone was easily my favorite location from it.

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I began the search for Jules’ house the moment I found out we were headed to New York.  Said to be located in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood in the movie, thanks to this Architectural Digest article I learned that the pad was actually a renovated brownstone in Clinton Hill.  That information led me to a post on the Brownstone website that stated that The Intern had done some filming at a home located at 385 Grand Avenue.  Upon closer investigation, though, I discovered that the Brownstone website reporting was slightly off.  Jules’ house can actually be found at 383 Grand Avenue.

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Several of the houses along the 300 block of Grand Avenue bear strikingly similar façades, which made figuring out the exact spot where filming took place a bit difficult.  I finally managed to pinpoint the locale, though, thanks to a few unique characteristics.  Namely, the edge of the faux portico above Jules’ front door was shown to be a greater distance away from the crosshead of the window directly next to it.  That was not the case with the neighboring homes.  Jules’ house, which has a black door, was also shown to be situated next to a dwelling with a brown door and stairs with a concrete railing, and two doors away from a home with a brown door and stairs with a metal railing.  From there, I simply headed to Google Street View and searched for the residence on that stretch of Grand with a large gap between its portico and window crosshead and a black door/concrete railing combo that was located next door to a house with a brown door and a concrete railing and two doors down from a house with a brown door and a metal railing.  It was not long before I found the right spot.

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Jules’ brownstone was featured extensively throughout The Intern.

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In the movie, Jules says, “I love this house.  It just looks happy to me, like if it was in a kid’s book, it would make you feel good when you turned the page and saw it,” which is the perfect way to describe the place.

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In person, the residence did not disappoint.

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It is not very hard to see how filmmakers came to choose it for the shoot.

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The dwelling is charming, picturesque, and screams of being the quintessential New York brownstone.

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It is very reminiscent, in fact, of Carrie Bradshaw’s (Sarah Jessica Parker) idyllic home from Sex and the City.

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The entire street is quite heavenly, actually.

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I was shocked to learn while researching this post that filming took place inside of the brownstone, as well, which is not in keeping with a typical Nancy Meyers shoot.  Usually, the esteemed director constructs elaborate sets for the interior of her characters’ homes, as was the case with It’s Complicated and The Holiday.  But for The Intern, the actual inside of 383 Grand was utilized as the interior of Jules’ spectacular house.  You can check out some photographs of the inside of the residence here.

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Though many of the living areas look much the same in reality as they did onscreen, the kitchen was completely redone for the shoot.  The property’s dark wood and glass cabinets were swapped out for dark blue drawers and open shelving, the center island was replaced with a larger, bluer version that was then moved to the center of the room, and the oven was relocated to the back wall.  You can check out how the kitchen is set up in real life here, here, and here.

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Though the actual space is gorgeous, personally, I prefer the look of Jules’ kitchen.

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According to a fascinating 2016 The New York Times article, the homeowners had to move out of the property for 11 weeks to accommodate the production, for which they were paid a whopping six figures!  The lengthy shoot irritated neighbors, though, and the city eventually put a temporary moratorium on filming in the area.

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The moratorium was rather unfortunate for the homeowners as the 4,032-square-foot, 4-story, 5-bedroom pad, which was originally built in 1900 and includes a separate ground-floor unit, is a virtual A-Lister of locations.  According to The New York Times article, the residence has been featured in countless shoots since its onscreen debut in the 2011 movie Friends with Kids, in which it was used to portray two locales.  It served as both the home of Missy (Kristen Wiig) and Ben (Jon Hamm) in the beginning of the flick . . .

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. . . and then later masked as the dwelling that Julie Keller (Jennifer Westfeldt) moved into.

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Some of the home’s other credits include a Nordstrom commercial and print ads for West Elm and Best Buy.

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For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

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Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: Jules’ house from The Intern is located at 383 Grand Avenue in Brooklyn’s Clinton Hill neighborhood.  (Note – the map link I’ve included is for 381 Grand Avenue as, for some reason, the 383 Grand Avenue link does not lead to the correct house.)

Alverno High School from “Passport to Paris”

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As I promised in Tuesday’s post, here is a photograph of me dressed as Buffy the Vampire Slayer for Halloween back in 1992.  My mom made the costume for me by hand and she made it absolutely PERFECT, so I was especially excited to tell Kristy Swanson about it when I met her this past Sunday night at the Celebration of Corey Haim’s life.   And now, on with the post!  Smile

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Two weekends ago I dragged the Grim Cheaper out to stalk a location that has long been at the top of my To-Stalk list – Alverno High School in Sierra Madre.  The school has appeared in hundreds upon hundreds of productions over the years, but I had been dying to stalk it for one reason and one reason only – it was one of the primary locations featured in the 1999 Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen video Passport to Paris.  Being that I was 22 years old when Passport to Paris was released and a full decade older than the flick’s targeted demographic, I can’t really explain why it was that I liked it so much.  But the truth is that, as an adult, I absolutely LOVED all of the MK & A videos and would rent them regularly from my local video store.  And yes, I know how strange that is.  😉  When in Rome and Winning London are my two favorites out of the twins’ myriad of straight-to-video movies, but Passport to Paris definitely runs a close third.  And because the vast majority of the Olsen’s movies were primarily filmed on location in exotic locales around the globe, you can imagine my excitement and surprise when I discovered that the main home used in Passport to Paris was literally right in my own backyard!

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Alverno High School was originally built as a private home for physician Walter Jarvis Barlow in 1924.  The manse was designed by legendary architect Wallace Neff and was modeled after a Tuscan-style mansion located in Tavainuzze, Italy named Villa Collazi.  Barlow dubbed his new residence Villa del Sol d’Oro, which roughly translates to Manor of the Golden Sun.  After Barlow passed away in 1942, his widow, Marion Patterson Barlow, sold the property to the Sisters of St. Francis while she promptly moved into the Huntington Hotel (now the Langham Hotel and Spa) in Pasadena, where she spent the remainder of her days.  Not too shabby of a place to spend your final years!  Anyway, for the next 18 years, Villa del Sol d’Oro was used as a novitiate – a home where nuns live during a probationary period before taking their vows.  In 1960 a high school named Alverno Heights Academy was founded on the property.  The name was later changed to Alverno High School, as it is known today.  Several buildings have since been constructed on the school grounds, but Villa del Sol d’Oro, which is a historical landmark, has thankfully been left untouched.  And while classes are not held in the actual Villa, the building is used regularly for special school events.

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Because Alverno is a working school, I did not expect to be able to get onto the property and was beyond FLOORED to discover that the side gate was standing open and several people were walking around the grounds.  One lady that I spoke with told me that she comes to the school each weekend just to walk around and appreciate the beauty of the place.  And it is not very hard to see why.  As you can see in the above photographs, Villa del Sol d’Oro is absolutely breathtaking!

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And, amazingly enough, there was a photo shoot taking place on the property when we showed up to stalk it, so all of the Villa’s doors were open.  And even though the SUPER nice staff member who was on duty at the time thought I was EXTREMELY odd for liking Passport to Paris so much, he allowed me to go inside to take a quick peek around and snap a few pictures, which I could NOT have been more excited about!

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In Passport to Paris, Alverno High School stood in for the American Embassy in Paris, France, where Ambassador Edward (aka Peter White), the grandfather of Melanie “’Mel’ Porter (aka Mary-Kate Olsen) and Allyson ‘Ally’ Porter (aka Ashley Olsen), lived.  And while the exterior of the property (pictured above) shown in the flick was a building in Paris . . .

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. . .  Villa del Sol d’Oro was used for all of the interior scenes.

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I am fairly certain that the girls’ bedroom in the movie was also located at Villa del Sol d’Oro, but because I did not get to see the upstairs portion of the property I am not able to verify that.

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In 1992’s Poison Ivy, Villa del Sol d’Oro was the high school that Ivy (aka Drew Barrymore) and Sylvie (aka Sara Gilbert) attended.

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Alverno High School also appeared at the very beginning of 1996’s Executive Decision as a Chechen Mafia safehouse supposedly located just outside of Trieste, Italy.

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In Legally Blonde, Alverno stood in for the Delta Nu sorority house where Elle Woods (aka Reese Witherspoon) and her “sisters” lived.

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And while a private home in San Francisco, which I blogged about back in April of 2008, stood in for the exterior of the San Francisco-area Anthony P. Grove High School in 2001’s The Princess Diaries, Alverno’s courtyard was used for all of the courtyard scenes in the movie.

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It was the convent where Christina Crawford (aka Diana Scarwid) was sent to live in the 1981 movie Mommie Dearest.

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In 1995’s A Walk in the Clouds, the interior of Villa del Sol d’Oro stood in for the interior of the Las Nubes vineyard home where the family of Victoria Aragon (aka Aitana Sanchez-Gijon) lived.

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The Villa was used as the Los Angeles Visitor Security Headquarters in the 1984 television mini-series  V: The Final Battle.

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Although they changed the property’s exterior gate for that production quite a bit.  LOL  I just about died laughing when I scanned through V and saw the above-pictured pseudo-space-age electronic gate.  Could it be any more ‘80s?

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The Villa’s actual gate is pictured above.

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The Villa was also the site of Axl Rose and Stephanie Seymour’s wedding reception in the Gun ‘N Roses “November Rain” music video . . .

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. . . which you can watch by clicking above.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: Alverno High School, from Passport to Paris, is located at 200 North Michillinda Avenue in Sierra Madre.  We entered the school via its Wilson Street gate.  Please remember that Alverno High School is an active learning institution and you should not trespass or visit the grounds during school hours.  You can visit Alverno’s official website here.

The 19th Annual Art of Motion Picture Costume Design Exhibition at FIDM

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As I mentioned in yesterday’s post about the Buckland Auction House from Charmed, this past weekend I dragged the Grim Cheaper out to stalk the 19th Annual Art of Motion Picture Costume Design Exhibition which is currently on display at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising Museum & Galleries in Downtown Los Angeles and which features costumes from twenty of last year’s most celebrated films, including Alice in Wonderland, Clash of the Titans, Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky, Robin Hood, The Wolfman, Burlesque, Hereafter, Inception, The Kids Are All Right, The King’s Speech, The Last Airbender, Nanny McPhee Returns, Shutter Island, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, The Tempest, True Grit, and The Young Victoria.  I had been dying to stalk the exhibition ever since first reading about it on fave website Seeing Stars a couple of weeks ago and because admission was free, the GC did not pose any objections!  Yay!

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Upon arrival at the museum, we were given a 24-page booklet detailing the various costumes on display, which are on loan to FIDM for the 12-week exhibition from studio archives, wardrobe departments, and personal collectors.  The booklet also featured fascinating interviews with the twenty costume designers who created the varied cinematic looks.  Some of the tidbits shared in the pamphlet were the fact that for the movie Clash of the Titans, costume designer Lindy Hemming had to create special closed-toes shoes for the actors to wear during the fight scenes, so as to protect their feet from injury.  The tops of the custom-made shoes were painted to look like bare feet so as to appear as if the actors were actually wearing gladiator sandals onscreen.  So incredibly cool!

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For The Last Airbender, which was filmed on location in Greenland, costume designer Judianna Makovsky created latex gloves resembling bare human hands for the actors to wear during the filming, which often took place in temperatures that dropped to well below zero degrees.   She also created special shoes with insulated platform soles for the actors to wear so as to keep their feet as far away from the snow on the ground as possible.

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Penny Rose, the costume designer of Disney’s Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, used such varied tools as a cement mixer and a cheese grater to give her creations the weathered look that the production required. 

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The filming of Inception’s many zero-gravity scenes posed some challenges for costume designer Jeffrey Kurland.  He says, “The clothes in those scenes could not be hanging down because, without gravity, they would be floating.  We had to do things like wire shoelaces to make sure they were standing straight out and tack down the men’s ties so they didn’t flop around at random.”  Reading the booklet about the exhibition and seeing the actual costumes in person made me realize how much thought, creativity, engineering, problem solving, and detail goes into designing costumes for the big screen – so much more than I ever before realized.  It was all absolutely FASCINATING to read about.

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The first costumes on display that really caught my eye were those from the movie Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky, which were designed by Chattoune Bourrex and Fabien Esnard-Lascombe, aka Chattoune & Fab.  The costumes were incredibly detailed, yet simple and classic, much like Coco Chanel herself.

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I loved, loved, loved the white dress pictured above, which was worn by Anna Mouglalis in the flick.

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There were several costumes on display from Alice in Wonderland, which was the winner of the 2011 Academy Award for Costume Design.  Colleen Atwood, the movie’s designer, says she collaborated quite a bit with actor Johnny Depp when creating the wardrobe for the character of the Mad Hatter.  She says, “Every time Johnny and I hooked up, he took it to another place.  We kept pushing it.  We talked about him having all the tools of his trade apparent, so they aren’t just on a shelf but part of his costume.  So he’s got his thimbles and his pincushion ring, the bandoleer of silk thread spools, the fun ribbons.  All these things help make the Hatter otherworldly and magical, but still real in a sense.”  She also said it was Depp who came up with the idea of the Hatter’s clothing changing color depending on his mood, an effect which was created digitally in post-production.  How incredibly cool is it that an actor of his caliber is so deeply involved in the creation of all aspects of his character, including the costumes?  Love it!

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And while I was quite impressed with the Mad Hatter’s costume, I was not at all impressed with the gown worn by the White Queen (aka Anne Hathaway) in the flick – which I unfortunately do not have a photograph of as pictures were not allowed in the exhibition hall, something the GC and I did not realize until we had already taken the first few photos which appear in this post.

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As you can see above, while the White Queen’s gown is quite detailed and appeared magical and ethereal onscreen, in person it was actually a bit disappointing.  For lack of a better word, the dress appeared cheap, much like a child’s Halloween costume one would find at a five-and-dime store, which only made me further realize how difficult and complex a costume designer’s job truly is.  Costume designers have to be concerned with how their designs come across onscreen, which is apparently quite a bit different than how they come across in real life.  I cannot even imagine how much work it must take to determine that and my hat is definitely off to them! 

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The costumes that I was most excited about seeing in person – and they did not AT ALL disappoint – were those from Burlesque, all of which were designed by Michael Kaplan.  Those costumes included the dress worn by Ali (aka Christina Aguilera) during the movie’s “Show Me How You Burlesque” final dance number.  For the costumes worn in that scene, Kaplan came up with the idea of using absolutely no fabric, but rather gold chains that had been linked together.  After designing several dresses using real gold links, however, he realized that they did not have enough “give” and did not move on the dancers’ bodies the way he had envisioned.  So he opted instead to swap out the gold with rubber washers that he had purchased at a local hardware store and then painted gold.  And the effect is nothing short of amazing!  Even up close, it is impossible to tell that the links are rubber!  Kaplan also used over 250,000 individual Swarovski crystals in the creation of the “Show Me How You Burlesque” costumes, which is absolutely mind-boggling to me!  Talk about some serious bling!

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The pearl-chained costume that Christina wore during the “Guy What Takes His Time” dance number was also on display.   To create the “illusion of nudity” in that and other scenes, Kaplan designed a body-suit that was dyed to match the exact skin color of each individual actor.  Of the bodysuit he says, “It let us keep our rating and provided something to anchor the chain.” 

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Kaplan also designed a skirt made solely out of garter belts for the “E.X.P.R.E.S.S.” dance number.  Of the design, he says, “It was a lot of fun to do that one – it was one of my favorites.”

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For the dancers’ wardrobe in the “I Am A Good Girl” scene, Kaplan went to the Western Costume Company and found costumes that had been deconstructed and taken apart.  “There was something that really attracted me to them, the history or the colors or the silhouettes,” he explains.  “I talked to the people at Western Costume and told them that I wanted to take these broken-down costumes and revamp them.  I took them apart and then put them all back together again as different costumes.  We had all this beautiful, old lace and fishnet and feathers.” 

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Christina’s outfit for the “I Am A Good Girl” number was also on display at the museum and it was by far my favorite out of the entire collection.  The outfit was nothing short of incredible and I must have gone back to look at it at least five different times.  I literally could not get enough of it, especially the shoes!  Oh, the shoes!  They were cream-colored high heels that had been emblazoned with hundreds upon hundreds of different-sized Swarovski crystals.  The detail that went into those shoes was ASTONISHING and they were breathtaking to look at!  I was absolutely SHOCKED to discover after leaving the museum that Michael Kaplan had not been nominated for an Academy Award.  All the creativity, innovation, and beauty that went into those costumes and the guy was not even nominated for an Oscar????  How is that possible??????  You can see some great photographs of the shoes, as well as some of the other Burlesque costumes on the Hollywood Movie Costumes & Props website here.

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The other costumes that I was most impressed with were those of Nic (aka Annette Bening) and Jules (aka Julianne Moore) from The Kids Are All Right, which you can take a look at on the FIDM Museum blog here.  While the costumes were not especially detailed or unusual, they were extremely realistic – clothing I believed an actual 2010-era couple would be wearing.  What struck me the most, though, was the women’s jewelry.  While each woman wore strikingly different jewelry, they both had matching red and gold beaded bracelets, which was a touch that I absolutely LOVED.  Those bracelets were not mentioned in the movie, but upon seeing them I conjured up a whole back-story in my mind – I could see the women purchasing them while on vacation together in some exotic locale and then wearing them daily as a reminder of that vacation.  All that thought and detail put into an accessory that I am sure was not even widely noticed onscreen.  It just goes to show how much costume can add to the backstory and history of a character. 

I honestly cannot more highly recommend stalking the 19th Annual Art of Motion Picture Costume Design Exhibit at FIDM!  It was a fabulous experience for me (although the GC did not enjoy it all that much Winking smile) and I cannot wait to do it again next year!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It:  The 19th Annual Art of Motion Picture Costume Design Exhibition is open through April 30th, excluding the week of April 22nd through 25th, at FIDM’s Museum & Galleries, which is located at 919 South Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles.  The exhibit is open each Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and admission is free!  For more information, you can visit the FIDM Museum & Galleries official website here.

The Princess Diaries

This weekend while doing some San Francisco Stalking, I dragged my boyfriend and my friend Nat to the “Grove High School” filming location from the movie The Princess Diaries, which I must confess I was a big fan of. 🙂 I am a total sucker for any teeny bopper movie! When we arrived at Grove High School, I recognized it immediately by its large circular staircase, and was shocked to learn that in reality it is not a school at all, but actually a private residence! The house is incredible in person and way huge!! I can’t even imagine living there!

The home is in a beautiful neighborhood that borders the Presidio of San Francisco. The Presidio is San Francisco’s former Army base and is now a park. The picture to the left is one of “Grove High School’s” neighboring homes. I definitely recommend a drive-by of this location, even for those non-stalkers out there, as the neighborhood is definitely a sight to see! Anne Hathaway’s house in the film is also located in San Francisco, and while I didn’t get a chance to stalk it on this trip, it’s definitely on my list for next time!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Grove High School is located at 2601 Lyon Street, at the intersection of Lyon and Green Street, in San Francisco. Mia and her mom’s home can be found at 724 Brazil Avenue. It is actually a real life former San Francisco fire house that was built in 1911.