Notes from Potter's "Orlando's clothes are like a catalogue of her life, from the relative freedom of breeches to the subjection of the crinoline..."
shows how important costume is to the story itself. Storyboards show framing of costume showing its overall importance to the composition of the shot
Costumes are assigned both by scene...
...and location
Time 4:26 "Exploding of a nostalgic myth: England's imagined history of itself, exploding it from within and looking at it ironically. Visually that was done by taking an imagined essence of each period with clues from paintings and artifacts from that time and then blowing it up. The design approach to this scene, as with each epoch, was to restrict the color palette so that all the tones, costumes, flowers whatever are based around gold." (she expands upon the design aspects of the scene)
Although not overtly about costumes, these notes by Sally Potter reveal that the visual (design, costumes etc) were an important draw for her in adapting this work for film. It 'tells through images which distill and condense a wealth of information'.
Sheds her outer male "layer" ... the next clip follows this one as she reestablishes identity through her clothing.
Transforming into the vision of a woman... observing herself; all about the female as visually pleasing.
Right after turning into a woman, Orlando gets dressed with the help of servant. The experience is described as discovering the hidden world of female clothing, expressing the central role of clothes in gender transformation.
In comparison to the dressing experience as a woman, Orlando is described as frantic and thus puts on clothes haphazardly.
Comparison of the two photos demonstrates the large part that costumes play in indicating both Orlando's gender and the time period.
