The Movies' Best-Loved Costumes

Cate Blanchett as Queen Elizabeth in Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Laurie Sparham

Cate Blanchett as Queen Elizabeth in Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007)
Part mannequin, part bird, Elizabeth lords it over the Court in her brocaded brilliance, her powdered white face topped by egret plumes. Costume designer Alexandra Byrne often revives glamorous golden ages: old Denmark in Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet, 19th century England in the BBC adaptation of Jane Austen's Persuasion and the sepulchral Paris of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera.

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