It's hard to decide whether I like Ralph Fiennes or Kristin Scott Thomas's style better in this movie. Those pleat front slacks, those baggy shirts with the sleeves rolled up, that gorgeous buttery leather jacket... I do love an explorer with the kit to boot. But Scott Thomas won out in this battle because of her great use of accessories in The English Patient. Ribbons in her hair, the perfect wide-brimmed hat, knotted scarves and one spectacular fringed wrap shawl and I was done for. Something I love even more than an explorer is a good wrap shawl. I was always fascinated by the way that Karen used to tie her wraps in Out of Africa. Katherine is another European aristo learning to love Africa in the late 1930s one wrap shawl at a time.
And, like with Out of Africa, despite the anachronisms in time there is a lot we can take form Katherine's 1930s-1940s wardrobe here. First of all, the colour scheme. A lot of beautiful, beautiful browns - from chocolate to tanned caramel with milky beige thrown in. Secondly, the fabrics. Natural fibres to cope with African heat, like linen, cotton, canvas and wool. And to that I would have to add all those fantastic shapes - the motorcycle jacket over blouse and oversized trousers, masculine and brash like a straight-talking Katherine Hepburn. The casual way she would hang a jacket off her shoulders or throw a scarf around her neck, the simple, easy gesture of the supremely self-confident. The delicacy of her later outfits at the consulate and the ball, curls pinned back and all with a double-string of pearls.
When I was in high school I first read Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient and I fell in love. I bought a second-hand Herodotus from the local bookshop and I started pasting things onto its pages - notes, pictures, chocolate wrappers, scraps of anything, the detritus of teenage life. It went with me when I went to school in New York, gathering bits and pieces of a foreign city as I went. I dressed like Katherine in oversized jackets and pants, in pretty linen shirting and high-waisted full skirts. I highlighted that infamous story about Candaules, Gyges and Candaule's wife. That bit was not to be plastered over by Smirnoff double black stickers or confetti pieces, no sir. I still find this movie so moving and I think that Kristen Scott Thomas is so beautiful in it. Those Tippi Hedren curls, that cut-glass accent, that aristocratic froideur. You see it rear its quite spectacular head later in the role of Lady Sylvia McCordle in Gosford Park, and it's why she's so fantastic in the role of HBIC in various French movies. What was so beautiful about The English Patient was how it showed that particularly, peculiarly English coldness melting as she was confronted by the charm ofAlmasy's Fiennes-ian awkwardness. And you see that in the wardrobe - from buttoned-up blouses to delicately embroidered linen and trailing scarves.
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