Movies have a knack for minting iconography. There’s Audrey Hepburn embodying a broke-but-bright-young-thing in a Givenchy little black dress in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Dennis Hopper captured 1960s counterculture in a fringed suede jacket in Easy Rider. Armani suits were all ’80s decadent masculinity in American Gigolo. Hawaiian shirts and gun holsters (or black bobs and cigarette pants) contained the manic kitsch favored in the ’90s in Pulp Fiction. These looks creep their way further into the canon through Halloween costumes, GIFs, and movie posters on college dorm walls.
My personal canon kicked off the first time I saw the pastries-and-anarchy 1966 Czech film Daisies, in which two mischievous sisters romp around in French bobs, flower crowns, and babydoll dresses while toying with the hearts of older men. Many imitations were tried; few were successful. Before the days of TikTok microaesthetics and moodboards, movies were some of the best ways to confer a stylish dream, whether it was the elegance of Catherine Deneuve in YSL in Belle de Jour or the post-apocalyptic grit of a shirtless man in a bulldog harness in Mad Max: The Road Warrior. Today, with designers like Dior’s Jonathan Anderson and Saint Laurent’s Anthony Vaccarello costuming movies from directors Luca Guadagnino and Jim Jarmusch, fashion and film have never been more intertwined.
Ahead of fashion month, we tapped our editors to sound off on the flicks that shaped their own style for good.
Funny Face, 1957
Audrey Hepburn has stunned in plenty of films, thanks in large part to her close friendship with designer Hubert de Givenchy. They were kind of the Zendaya and Law Roach of their day, long before the latter invented the term “image architect.” While the assertion that Hepburn could ever be a dowdy dud in need of a makeover adds an element of ridiculousness to the film, there are few more enjoyable ways to spend an afternoon than watching her parade around Paris in Givenchy’s custom designs. Beyond the show-stopping dresses, my favorite ensemble in Funny Face is actually the all-black look (with white socks) that Hepburn dons to go listen to jazz and bunk off work. I wore this same look my entire freshman year of college in hopes that it would imbue me with the same effortless attitude.
—Sophie Lee, Associate Editor
Unzipped, 1995
This documentary, directed by Douglas Keeve, follows Isaac Mizrahi as he prepares for his comeback show. It is a spectacle of ’90s glamour and New York personalities. The voices of André Leon Talley, John Galliano, Polly Mellen, and Eartha Kitt intermingle with archival footage of the designer’s camp inspirations—Nanook of the North, Valley of the Dolls, The Mary Tyler Moore Show. It changed my life. I first watched the film, borrowed from the local library, with my mother when I was 10. The startling switch from black-and-white to color as the models—Kate, Carla, Linda, Naomi among them—strut down the runway became my very own Wizard of Oz. Without my knowing it, the allure of Manhattan, with all its witches good and bad, paved a yellow brick road.
—Ian Malone, Director of Brand
Drop Dead Gorgeous, 1999
A sartorial distillation of turn of the millennium American malaise: baby tees, faded denim, bedazzled flag bandanas, a slut-shaming popular girl bursting into flames in a white gown, a wan blonde anorexic wearing last year’s pageant tiara in a hospital bed. Not to mention Denise Richards’s almost surrealist Mount-Rushmore headpiece and Brittany Murphy’s tinfoil witch’s hat that doubles as a Barbified sculptural iteration of the Statue of liberty. Denise Richards’s floral separates drip with kitten heels at the gun range. (Honorable mentions to Sissy Spacek’s hot pants in Badlands and the utterly fabulous low-rise striped pants Tom Cruise buys the indentured servant/prophetess to wear on the lam in Minority Report.)
—Emmeline Clein, Literary Editor
Tár, 2021
The clothes Cate Blanchett wears in this movie legitimately made me want to become a more confident, sleeker version of myself. The suits fit perfectly; there’s an efficiency and unfussiness to her wardrobe that elucidate so much about the character. There’s one scene where she’s en route for a trip and sporting a dark coat from The Row and a New York Rangers cap that is excellent.
—Josh Duboff, Morning People Columnist
Les Demoiselles de Rochefort and Peau d’Âne, 1967 and 1970
I’m allergic to most musicals, but I make yearly exceptions to rewatch Les Demoiselles de Rochefort and Peau d’Âne, two of the movies that came out of director Jacques Demy and composer Michel Legrand’s decades-spanning collaboration. (Their acclaimed Les Parapluies de Cherbourg is way too sad to warrant the personal pilgrimage.) Both fairy tales, although set in distinctly different eras (the Middle Ages and the ’60s), they are visual manifestations of committing to the bit. (For Les Demoiselles, Demy had the French city of Rochefort’s facades repainted to adhere to the film’s pastel palette.) And nowhere are Demy’s aesthetic antics more satisfying than in the films’ respective wardrobes. In Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (1967), Gene Kelly’s pink polo, Catherine Deneuve and her real-life sister Françoise Dorléac’s twinning red sequin numbers, and Jacques Perrin’s sailor attire are standouts. Three years later, in Peau d’Âne, Deneuve—playing a princess whose father, after the death of her own mother, wants to marry her—asks for increasingly unwieldy nuptial gifts in the form of decadent dresses, before fleeing the kingdom wearing little more than the titular donkey skin. (If anyone can pull it off, Deneuve can!) Neither film’s outfits are easily replicable, but they will teach you much about fashion’s extraordinary capacity to bottle emotion and diffuse it.
—Ella Martin-Gachot, Senior Editor
The Devil Wears Prada, 2006
I know, I know—but like every girl born in the ’90s who fell in love with the glamorous world of magazines thanks to movies like 13 Going On 30 and How to Lose a Guy In 10 Days, The Devil Wears Prada had tween me in an absolute chokehold. The clothes are good and the one-liners even better, but something about the movie that always stuck with me is its inside-baseball approach. It assumed that we, the audience, would accept the shorthand tossed around between Miranda, Nigel, and Emily, and, if we didn’t, that was too bad. I will never forget the day I finally understood all the references in Miranda’s laundry list of demands that started with “10 or 15 skirts from Calvin Klein,” then progressively spiraled into obscurity via first-name-only instructions, culminating in the now-iconic line, “Did Demarchelier confirm?” This movie made me not only want to understand the fashion world, but to live in it. The Chanel boots makeover look is canon, obviously, but my favorite Andy look is the sleek black one where she finally gets a small nod of approval from Miranda—sleek, chic, and wow, do I want layered charm necklaces to come back.
—Kristin Corpuz, Social Media Director
Practical Magic, 1998
This movie manages to capture the full spectrum of enviable ’90s style, from Sandra Bullock’s cottagecore cardigans and lacy slip dresses to Nicole Kidman’s sultry, grunge-adjacent black boots and velvet dresses. (She also wears fabulous Victorian high-necked button downs.) Upon googling, I learned the film’s overarching style has been described as “whimsigoth.” As fall approaches, I want to wear it all—and also, maybe, get bangs? Every outfit Sandra Bullock wears to work as herb shop owner Sally is dreamy, but my favorite is the green spaghetti-strap dress and botanical print cardigan that an eagle-eyed blogger identified as 1998 Blumarine.
—Julia Halperin, Editor-at-Large
When Harry Met Sally, 1989
This is not a new take, but the stylistic choices draped across the characters in this seminal rom-com are, without a doubt, some of the most memorable out there. From Billy Crystal’s scenes in that unbelievably creamy fisherman’s sweater to Meg Ryan’s layers of dirty-blonde mane and frumpy-fab layering that the eternal fall/winter of that movie demanded, the wardrobe, in my cinematic canon, is just as iconic as the “I’ll have what she’s having” line.
—Sam Falb, Assistant Editor
Tank Girl, 1995
Must a movie be “good” in order to be stylish? Tank Girl captures the anarchic and raucous energy of Jamie Hewlett’s original comix (although it never dips into the truly transgressive chaos), which is all I ever wanted for myself as a 7 Year Bitch-loving PNW punk. Tank Girl’s most iconic looks are all here, and then some: the Royal Air Force cutoff tank, the conical missile bra, dozens of manic and clipper-happy Chelsea haircuts, and a veritable avalanche of pieces from Helmut Lang’s 1993 collections. Costume designer Arianne Phillips also apparently tapped a then-unknown Rick Owens for several of the looks. Anyone who’s rocking motorcycle boots and long shorts in the summer has Tank Girl to thank. Original designs of the film’s legendary Stiff Records shirt are hard to come by, and a true vintage one will run you $300 on eBay these days. I copped mine in a basement thrift in Cleveland, Ohio for $25.
—Karly Quadros, Assistant Managing Editor
Heaven Can Wait, 1978
Warren Beatty co-wrote, co-directed, produced, and starred in this soft and easy late-’70s romantasy, in which he plays an LA Rams quarterback whose soul is decanted into the body of a sketchy mega-millionaire. The quarterback tries to get his new body in Super Bowl shape and rejoin the Rams, while falling in love with Julie Christie (Beatty’s real life-ex). Costume designers Theadora Van Runkle and Richard Bruno created my dream wardrobe, if I could pull something from every character: Beatty’s loopback straight-leg sweatsuits and Hamilton Pulsar P2; Christie’s gentlewoman tweeds; Dyan Cannon’s daily OTT diamonds and dinner gowns; even Jack Warden’s ’70s-coach short-shorts.
—Emily Dougherty, Beauty Editor
Raise the Red Lantern, 1991
It’s 1920s China, and the protagonist, played by Gong Li, is a promising student who becomes the fourth concubine of an oppressive landowner, where she is pitted against his other wives. Her aoqun and qipao silhouettes shift from spring, lightweight, embroidered silks to a winter wardrobe of quilted, puffy jackets and trousers. The changing colors of Li’s outfits trace her emotional decline. At the beginning, when she arrives at the compound, she wears white, signaling youthful independence and purity. As her naiveté gives way to frustration and competition, she armors herself in heavily brocaded red dresses, stiff and stifling. In the final act, she appears in grays and blues, depressed and haunted by her indiscretions, leading to the deaths of two women. The quilted stone-blue jacket, with its fur-trimmed high collar, evokes an elegant woman who is also a caged animal.
—Karen Wong, Contributing Architecture Editor
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