This film, whose German title is a gen­der-flipped play on the proverbial phrase “clothes make the man”, shows how the batik dyeing technique is used to create vividly patterned garments in a small re­tail shop in New York. Different items of clothing are then modelled for the camer­as to the, at times, patronising and sexist commentary provided in the intertitles.

Approved for public exhibition in Germany on 19 October 1925, Kleider machen Leute was likely adapted from an earlier American film, made to showcase the second Prizma process in­vented by William Van Doren Kelley; a subtractive two-colour process that uti­lised duplitised print stock coated with a light-sensitive emulsion on both sides, with one side toned red, the other blue, to simulate a full-colour image. Restrict­ed to short subjects and selected sequences in a small number of feature films, the Prizma process proved short-lived, but it paved the way for other two-colour sys­tems that followed, including early ver­sions of Technicolor.

Oliver Hanley