Dracula’s Armor designed by Eiko Ishioka for Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)
Faced with a limited budget, Francis Ford Coppola declared early on that “the costumes will be the set.” For its costume designer, he picked Eiko Ishioka, an art director and graphic artist whose poster for Apocalypse Now (1979) he had loved a few years earlier. Something of an unexpected choice, Ishioka had never before seen a vampire movie and had limited costume design experience in feature films.
Mixing Eastern and Western cultural influences, she drew upon everything from insects and lizards to armadillos and red-blood corpuscles for inspiration, creating costumes that evoked haute couture, superhero attire, and traditional Japanese formal wear.
