Cruella Designer’s Snub For Licensing Outrages Costume Design Guild

Disney’s creation of a Cruella-inspired fashion line without costume designer, Jenny Beavan, gets the Costume Designers Guild to speak out.

A new fashion line inspired by the hit film, Cruella, has been released without the film’s costume designers’ knowledge. Films’ costumes become iconic and go on to have a life outside the film, including being part of the merchandise for the film, like toys, Halloween costumes, and even whole wardrobes lifted from the film. While talent like directors and actors get compensated for their work after a film, costume designers aren’t as lucky and their work becomes property of the studio with little to no involvement after the film.

Being a film based around the world of fashion, Cruella enlisted Jenny Beavan as the film’s costume designer. Beavan has a long list of credits and has been nominated for her work at the Academy Awards ten times and winning Best Costume Design two times, for A Room With a View and Mad Max: Fury Road. Beavan is currently working on the Mad Max prequel, Furiosa, and she discovered that Disney was creating an officially licensed Cruella collection without her involvement or knowledge.

Related: How Cruella’s Backstory Changes Turns The Disney Villain Into A Hero

According to Variety, Beaven recalls there were discussions of working with Disney on co-branded products for Cruella and the possibilities included a fashion collection. However, when production wrapped, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and Beaven says she didn’t hear from Disney afterward. Disney has not yet commented on the situation. The Costumes Designers Guild has now spoken up for Beaven, with the president of the organization Salvadaor Pérez Jr releasing a statement:

As costume designers, our work has a life beyond the screen. Our work is reproduced for toys, costumes, fashion collections and more. Not only are we not allowed to participate in the profits made off of the merchandising, we aren’t even credited for our work on the original designs.

This is not the first time Disney has come under fire for practices that don’t properly compensate creators for their work. Ed Brubaker, who created the concept of the Winter Soldier during his Captain America run at Marvel, has said despite the character being a major part of the MCU and the co-lead of his own series on Disney+, Brubaker doesn’t see any additional money for creating the concept that Disney makes billions of dollars off of. Brubaker gets paid more for his cameo role in Captain America: The Winter Soldier than any appearance the character makes.

Cruella is a film based around the competitive nature of fashion with the villain of the film, Emma Thompson Baroness, is characterized by taking the design and hard work of others without giving them proper credit, so it is ironic that Disney finds itself in the situation where they are performing the same action as the villain. Cruella’s elaborate costumes were a major highlight for critics and audiences, and one imagines that Disney was hoping to score a nomination for the film in the Costume Design Category at the upcoming Academy Awards. Now, with everything so tense between the talent, the guild, and Disney, it will be interesting to see how it all unfolds and if Disney and other studios start compensating and collaborating with their costume designers.

Next: Cruella’s Biggest Unanswered Questions

Source: Variety

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