Cultural Studies
These Movies Have Good Clothes
It’s fine if you disagree, but don’t @ us.
The connection between costume and concept is obvious in “Ocean’s 8”: It’s a heist movie staged at the Met Gala, the biggest (and most expensive) night in fashion. But what most critics have seen is a dressed-up, watered-down version of the other films in the “Ocean’s” franchise.
To which we say: Why can’t clothes be the whole point?
When we talk about fashion films, certain loosely related titles and stars come to mind. Is anything starring Audrey Hepburn a fashion film? Or the ones directed by Tom Ford? Are movies about the fashion industry, like “Zoolander,” “The Devil Wears Prada” and “Phantom Thread,” too obvious? Do stylish action movies, like “Blade Runner” and “The Matrix,” count? Don’t even get us started on the documentaries — we know, we know, “The September Issue” is totally underrated.
If there’s a canon to be established, or added to, we’re not concerned with it. What’s more interesting, to us at least, is how certain items leap from the screen to our cerebral cortex, there to stay forever: a white pantsuit, wildly impractical platform shoes, a “Ver-sayce” dress. Sometimes a fashion film is just an O.K. movie with amazing clothes. Can’t that be enough?
“The Parent Trap” (1998)
I still couldn’t tell you whether I’d rather be Hallie Parker or Annie James. When I first saw “The Parent Trap,” starring Lindsay Lohan, I was in elementary school and both characters were the epitome of cool. Hallie embodied some distant idea of Northern California; she wore sunglasses over her side-swept bangs and her father owned a vineyard. Annie, with her British accent and tiny businesswoman outfits, seemed so posh and mature.
Even when in their Camp Walden regalia, the sisters styled their uniforms according to type: Hallie in ringer tees and varsity jackets, Annie with her polo shirt collar folded neatly over her crew-neck sweatshirts. What makes this a fashion movie to me is its reliance on the idea that we’re all fooling people with the way we dress, that clothes can allow us to slip easily into and out of identities. It’s only when the identical twins piece together a torn-in-half photograph of their parents that they recognize themselves as sisters. BONNIE WERTHEIM
“The Hunger Games” (2012)
Historically, there have been films that influence designers because of their aesthetic values, and films that designers use as their subjects or backdrop because of their memorable characters. But to me, one of the most revealing films about fashion is not actually a fashion film at all. I am talking about, of course, “The Hunger Games,” a piercing satire of the early-21st-century fashion world masquerading as a dystopian teen blockbuster/Jennifer Lawrence vehicle.
In the futuristic world of “The Hunger Games,” first magicked up by the author Suzanne Collins but taken to a new level in the movie, 12 largely impoverished and exploited colonies are ruled by the Capitol: a society so indolent and pampered that its denizens have had their souls corrupted by the pursuit of … plastic surgery! (Also: hair dye, body defoliation and ever-more-crazy costumes.)
Among the most powerful people in the ruling city, and the fight-to-the-death titular reality show that entertains them, are the stylists. Of which the only really good guy is the one who hasn’t disguised himself in absurd outfits. And the way said stylists dress the competitors is integral to their strategy and the effort to win.
Sound familiar? There’s a lesson there, if only we care to learn it. VANESSA FRIEDMAN
“Three Days of the Condor” (1975)
On its face, “Three Days of the Condor,” which stars Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway, is an espionage thriller released post-Watergate. But for me and for many other men, “Condor” presents a master class in how to dress simply and handsomely. Mr. Redford plays a bookish C.I.A. researcher who leaves the office for lunch, returns and discovers that his colleagues have all been killed. He has to outpace the assassin and uncover the conspiracy, armed with only his wits, the help of Ms. Dunaway and a killer wardrobe of layered basics: a gray herringbone blazer; a navy wool sweater; a chambray dress shirt; and bluejeans.
Every piece is perfectly tailored and, as worn by Mr. Redford, transcends the Ivy League associations to look more rugged all-American than college prep. It’s winter in New York, and the chilly weather gives the film its clearest fashion moment (along with the image for the poster): Mr. Redford confronts the C.I.A. boss along the waterfront wearing a navy wool peacoat with its collar turned up. Is that huge collar popped as a buffer against the cold or the machinations of a cynical government? Either way, it’s a scene stealer. STEVEN KURUTZ
“What’s Love Got to Do With It” (1993)
There are many sartorial delights in “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” the harrowing biopic of Tina Turner’s life starring Angela Bassett with Laurence Fishburne as Ike Turner, her vicious Svengali and batterer. The film marches through three decades at a brisk clip, and the period costumes, deployed by Ruth E. Carter with the lushness that defines her work, are guilty pleasures amid the unfurling horror of the Turner marriage.
There are satiny sheathes and swanky suits in sherbet colors in the 1950s; the ’60s are bold and crisp — look at the Ikettes on the road, in sharp yellow Capri pants and black patent leather belts. By the ’70s, all hell breaks looks, stylistically and otherwise; the peaks of Ike’s collars swell in direct proportion to his cocaine habit.
It was Ms. Carter’s 10th film — her first was Spike Lee’s “School Daze” and she would go on to design the costumes for “Amistad,” “The Butler,” “Selma” and, gloriously, “Black Panther,” among many others. She assembled over 90 outfits for Ms. Bassett, with a little help from Ms. Turner herself.
But perhaps the most significant piece was a matter of public record — the white Yves Saint Laurent suit Tina wore the day she left Ike, running across a highway in Dallas with 36 cents and a Mobil credit card in her pocket to the safety of a Ramada Inn and a kindly manager there. Though there was blood on those lapels, it was the ultimate power suit — its symbolism reaching back to the suffragists who chose white and gold as their uniform, and foreshadowing the wardrobe choice of another determined woman on the verge of a breakthrough. PENELOPE GREEN
“Showgirls” (1995)
Most comedies of manners use women’s clothing and appearance to emphasize, mock or sometimes even celebrate class transgressions. “Showgirls” (like “Working Girl” before it) does all of those things alternately and at once, which is part of what has made it so thorny and illegible all these years.
Our drifter-grifter hero, Nomi Malone, hitches into Las Vegas in a tied-off floral shirt, bad pale jeans and a black fringed leather jacket. She is a rube and a disaster. Consumed with burning drives for any amount of financial security and for fame, she spends a significant chunk of the film nearly naked but heavily caked in glitter, first stripping and lap dancing and then appearing in the big shows of girl.
Just as she begins to reach some measure of financial stability through her more legitimate dancing, she purchases a Versace black cocktail dress. It is the most conservative thing she wears in the film. She has finally stepped up to these chic heights only to give herself away with describing the dress as “Ver-sayce” to a room full of sophisticates, bringing a deep cringe from any viewer who has ever belly-crawled her way under the barbed-wire fence of the class divide.
In the end, Nomi leaves town in a shiny shirt with a leopard print, skintight black jeans with a lace-up crotch, and a black cowboy hat that symbolizes her becoming her own sheriff. She is, at last, luxurious and high-end, by the standards of the town. And yet “Showgirls” still takes place in a setting where this “height of fashion” would be considered vulgar, at best, in any city that is not Las Vegas (except possibly Los Angeles, which becomes each year more like a big lazy Las Vegas with decent fruits and vegetables). Still, Nomi here is clad as the top dog, the queen of the show. “Showgirls,” from whatever our distance, reminds us that every society’s conventions for appearance are about exclusion and are repressive and stupid. CHOIRE SICHA
“La Collectionneuse” (1967)
“La Collectionneuse” is about vacationing French youngs at a seaside house in St. Tropez: two art bros and a woman named Haydée who shrugs them off.
Like most the movies in the art bro starter kit, “La Collectionneuse” is a look at the in-between: the time between adolescence and adulthood, the leisure between work, the desire between the first meeting and a relationship. For the entire film, the characters move about that thick stuff, and then … nothing happens.
The clothes complement the lazy story line: swimwear half-buttoned over for the short walk between the indoors and the water; open-foot, worn-in jeans, pilling knits; all comfy and colorful solids draped nonchalantly on lounging bodies, poppy and graphic against the Riviera behind in muted passé composé. Pats of brights in a Matisse.
At the beginning of the movie, the narrator, facedown and floating in the cool Mediterranean, says, “I could easily imagine myself spending a whole month this way.” This feeling, and this film, informed my approach to style in my mid-20s: to enjoy dressing as a way to be momentarily freed from past or future anxieties, to be un-self-conscious enough to see and appreciate the present moment. TRACY MA
“Brick” (2005)
Rian Johnson’s first feature film, “Brick,” is a mash-up, a murder mystery set at a high school in which the death of a girl named Emily sets a teenage gumshoe off on a surprisingly bloody search for answers. Michele Posch, the movie’s costume designer, worked with the director to provide clues through clothes. Vestiary overlap between discrete social groups — jocks, geeks, theater kids and burnout gangsters — hints at overarching conspiracy laden with drugs, deceit and a panoply of looks.
Charged with unraveling things is Brendan Fry, a teenage Sam Spade played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. The actor wore his own glasses and shoes for the role, frameless round spectacles and brown loafers that don’t belong anywhere near a high school. The rest of his outfit is thrift-store simple: straight-leg Levi’s, green jacket with a woolen collar, and a white Hanes T-shirt. (They only used one shirt; Ms. Posch brought it home to wash every night during the shoot.)
The uniform’s unfussy fussiness speaks to Brendan’s obsessiveness, his determination to find out what happened. I was similarly obsessive about high school hierarchies, and significantly less stylish, and it was the first time I had seen a character look so cool, so controlled, while wearing clothes that I could conceivably wear, too. JONAH ENGEL BROMWICH
“Spice World” (1997)
This much is clear about the 1997 movie “Spice World”: It was a movie starring the Spice Girls. It had a Rube Goldberg plot centered around the titular Girls preparing for a concert at the Royal Albert Hall (a venue of no particular significance to non-British fans) that incorporated aliens, boot camp, a woman going into labor at a nightclub, men in lilac thongs and a tour bus driven by the musician Meat Loaf (not playing himself).
The plot should have proven as difficult to recall as the exact midair locations of confetti particles years after they have been swept into the trash. And yet, the near-random collection of scenes that make up “Spice World” are easy to call to mind because of the outfits.
The singers are impractically dressed for every activity: Posh Spice (Victoria Beckham, then Victoria Adams) wears a camouflage minidress to complete a military obstacle course; Ginger Spice (Geri Horner, then Geri Halliwell) wears a sleeveless latex jumpsuit to urinate in the woods.
Still more impressively, their ensembles, while assembled from a single radioactive pool of late 1990s club wear, always manage to convey a distinct personal style, even as they change practically from frame to frame: Ginger’s bathrobe is orange and Posh’s is purple because the other way around wouldn’t make sense. The garments (save for the platform sneakers) are skimpy enough that each could fit individually inside an envelope, but the sheer yardage of fabrics on display rivals any Oscar-bait Regency-era period piece. More is more, argues “Spice World,” but most is best. CAITY WEAVER
“In the Mood for Love” (2000)
Probably not since Josef von Sternberg used costuming to transform Marlene Dietrich from a plump German starlet into a mesmerizing world-weary femme fatale in “Morocco” has a director deployed fashion in the service of atmosphere and character more astutely than Wong Kar-wai. “In the Mood For Love,” his complexly plotted and almost actionless tale of two strangers cuckolded by their respective spouses, was filmed over the course of a year, its dialogue largely improvised by the principal actors, Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung.
Words, in a certain sense, barely matter in a work like this. Using a series of interior frames within the larger one of the camera lens, and fashion as a tool for delineating character, it unspools like a silent film. Both of the movie’s principal characters are defined by their clothing, Mr. Leung his skinny ’60s ties and salaryman suits and Ms. Cheung her elegant qipao.
When the curators of the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art mounted “China: Through the Looking Glass’’ in 2015 — collaborating with Mr. Kar-wai — they worked into the exhibit clips from “In the Mood for Love” and also versions of the classic dresses that, on Ms. Cheung, were so exaggeratedly high-collared that they framed (and all but immobilized) her impassively beautiful face. They were so tautly fitted that they telegraphed her character’s coiled sexual longings; and yet so variously patterned that each change of dress acts to signal a shift in the movie’s emotional weather. GUY TREBAY
“Desperately Seeking Susan” (1985)
“Desperately Seeking Susan” is the best Madonna movie, perhaps because it serves as an allegory for the many women who styled themselves in Madonna’s image. Which is to say, the film is transparently about clothes: a glittery jacket, studded ankle boots, a pair of ancient Egyptian earrings.
In case you need refreshing, the story goes like this: Rosanna Arquette plays Roberta, a bored housewife in Fort Lee, N.J., who reads the personals for vicarious thrills. She becomes obsessed with a pair of strangers, Susan and Jim, who communicate through the ads, and begins spying on the couple. Through said espionage, Roberta discovers that the woman (Susan, played by Madonna) is everything she’s not. Cool, bohemian, carefree. After Susan trades her telltale jacket for the studded boots in a thrift store, Roberta picks up the coat and makes it her own.
The purchase proves regrettable as the plot moves toward the absurd. Criminals are after Susan for a pair of ancient Egyptian earrings she stole out of an Atlantic City hotel room. A character named Dez mistakes Roberta for Susan, and a scuffle ensues. Roberta hits her head on a lamppost in Battery Park and gets amnesia. The Madonna wannabe thinks she’s Madonna. It’s ridiculous and brilliant and an essential ’80s fashion film. JACOB BERNSTEIN
“Dick: The Unmaking of the President” (1999)
My favorite movie-with-good-clothes is “Dick: The Unmaking of the President,” a retelling of the Watergate scandal that imagines Deep Throat, the Washington Post source, was the code name of two teenage girls.
Betsy and Arlene, played by Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams, have great 1970s outfits and a Forrest Gumpian way of always being in the right place at the right time. Early in the movie, they run into G. Gordon Liddy at the Watergate (where Arlene lives with her mother) on the night of the burglary. Later, on a school field trip to the White House, they come across a list of payoffs compiled by the administration. In order to keep them quiet, Nixon hires them (as dog walkers, natch).
Their outfits change from scene to scene in a reflection of the times. They also seem to evolve with the young ladies’ growing awareness of the world. Arlene trades in her cat-eye glasses, mod shift dresses and ’60s bouffant for straight hair and bell-bottoms. Both girls wear more peace-sign jewelry and other hippie accouterment as they learn of the president’s bad behavior and become more involved in the Post investigation.
The movie includes performances by Will Ferrell and Bruce McCulloch as those “radical muckraking bastards” Woodward and Bernstein; Ana Gasteyer as Nixon’s devoted secretary Rose Mary Woods; and Ryan Reynolds as the dopey college roommate of H.R. Haldeman’s son.
But the outfits make it. The plaid pants, flower-power bucket hats and orange-and-avocado color palette are a glorious throwback to another era, another time of crisis in the White House. Spoiler alert: The girls oust the president but have a hard time keeping cool under the pressure. Could be because the costume designer, Deborah Everton, reportedly sourced all the outfits from a stock of unused ’70s clothing. “Those girls were wearing polyester,” the director, Andrew Fleming, told HuffPost. “They were sweating.” NATALIE SHUTLER
“Clueless” (1995)
“You don’t understand, this is an Alaïa.” It’s not what most people would say while being told to lie on the ground at gunpoint. But then again, most people aren’t Cher Horowitz.
Her memorable looks are almost innumerable: the yellow schoolgirl outfit! The knee-highs! The white Calvin Klein dress that she wears on her first date with Christian! When I was growing up in Greece, the “Clueless” aesthetic was like a foreign import. Cher and Dionne Davenport were the chic California teenagers that I yearned to dress like and whose shopping habits I aspired to live out: Calvin Klein, Contempo Casual, Fred Segal, Boulmiche. Mona May, the costume designer, apparently outfitted the cast in more than 53 different types of plaid.
And how could we forget these lines?
Dionne: “Dude, what’s wrong? You suffering from buyer’s remorse or something?”
Cher: “Oh God no, nothing like that!” JOANNA NIKAS
“Heathers” (1988)
No object has been so clear an emblem of toxic teenage femininity as the red scrunchie that Heather Chandler wraps around her curly blond hair in the 1988 film “Heathers.” It’s a tiara that signals her alphaness. It’s the color representation of her popularity blood lust. It’s a means of keeping her hair out of her eyes so she can focus on those she wishes to destroy.
“Heathers” is a great fashion film because the clothes and accessories are not mere accessories, they are integral to the characters’ identities. With shoulder-padded suit jackets, short pleated skirts and knee socks and tights, the Heathers dress as 1980s high school students may imagine a cutthroat businesswoman would.
When Heather No. 1 falls off her pedestal (drinking a big glass of drain cleaner after eating Corn Nuts can do that to a young woman), Heather No. 2, previously dressed in green boxy suit jackets and short skirts, assumes the mantle, red scrunchie and all. (It’s not just a hair tie! It’s a social designation.)
With their frenemy, Veronica, the Heathers play croquet, knocking around (and we have to assume the pun is intended) shiny balls while dressed in Crayola colors. The outfits are sophisticated and childlike, come-hither and intimidating. Just like the characters. KATHERINE ROSMAN
“Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” (1970)
It may seem strange to highlight the clothing from a film that was noted for skin. But when it comes to brazen fashion statements in film, “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls,” Russ Meyer’s sex-drenched sendup of the psychedelic era, is my happening and it freaks me out.
As a film, this kaleidoscopic sleaze fest, about a female rock trio trying to make it in free-love-era Los Angeles, is basically one big brown-acid trip. But the clothes! Thanks to the costume designer David Hayes, this was Austin Powers decades before Austin Powers, a runway show of Day-Glo minidresses, paisley ascots, patterned head scarves and proto-“Seinfeld” puffy shirts.
And while it’s safe to say that Mr. Meyer, the grindhouse king, had precisely zero artistic reasons for training his cameras on all those plunging necklines, the film does accidentally capture the unbridled sexuality that lurked beneath even the mainstream fashion of the day. Somehow, the clothed characters in the film look more louche than the naked ones.
To say this film now seems dated, confusing and wildly out of step with current sensitivities is to state the obvious. But give it credit: At least “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” understood from the outset that hippie style was essentially a cartoon. That’s more than you can say for “Easy Rider.” ALEX WILLIAMS
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