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Notes -
No but their clothes didn't look new, and they certainly weren't able to get all the residue out... think of the stains that stay in ordinary bright clothes, the impossibility of getting fruit or vegetable stains out of brightly colored clothes even today.
That's what your eye will expect to see when they see clothes that are supposed to have been exposed to hard use... and if it doesn't it will break the reality of the film.
Even though people put incredible effort into cleanliness in the past it couldn't keep things looking new, and before the era if machine washing and chemical cleaners "not new" looked very distinctively different form lawrence olivier
There were some ways around this. One example that comes to mind is the previous use of detachable shirt collars and dark three piece suits. The latter didn’t show stains as well and the former allowed men to wear the same shirt multiple days in a row while only having to swap/clean their collar.
Yes exacly... thus you'd either look faded or show obvious visible wear and aging of your clothes.... or you'd wear dark colors.
Filmmakers struggle to age clothes appropriately... so they put them in dark colors
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