Thursday Style Icon: Kay Corleone

I have a confession to make: I have never seen any of The Godfather movies. (Don't shoot me.) So when this article found it's way across my Twitter timeline via Roger Ebert, I clicked on the link out of my sheer trust in his opinion. He did not disappoint! One of his foreign correspondents, Pablo Villaca in Brazil, submitted this piece on his love of The Godfather trilogy, and especially the creative brilliance of the wardrobe of main character Kay Corleone. Villaca writes that Kay, portrayed by Diane Keaton (a fashion icon in her own right), is a physical embodiment of the destructive forces of the Corleone family, and Michael specifically.

He states, '...it would be impossible not to notice her dress when she visits the Corleone compound while looking for Michael (who's hiding in Sicily) - its intense orange/red color basically screams against the grey and the black usually seen on the clothes of her boyfriend's family. And it's pretty clear the idea behind this choice is to stress how distant Kay is from the dark universe of the Corleones. But if you pay close attention to how Kay's clothes change during the three films you'll realize how brilliant the visual logic of the trilogy is. Showing a weakness for orage/red tones on her clothing from her very first scene [in The Godfather], Kay is always seen wearing costumes dominated by those colors during the sequences in which she's still a single woman.'

But by the end of The Godfather III, Kay's palette has changed drastically. The deeper and deeper she got into the crime family, the more the reds and oranges drained from her wardrobe.

Once again seduced by her ex-boyfriend and his promise of making the Family "legitimate", Kay marries Michael and, when we see her again, her clothes gradually start losing her trademark color, symbolizing the harmful effect of the Corleones on her personality and on her life... [After he leaves to Sicily, she tries to start over] Her efforts, however, don't resist to Michael's destructive force - and so, when we arrive at the final scene, all color has been completely drained from her life and from her clothes.

That's pretty powerful stuff. And if you scroll down through the pictures below, you can see how accurate his observations are. Now I really have to see this movie.















To read the full article, click here.