Film is a biography – an autobiography, even – of a society. It is a window into the soul of a movie-watching culture. It freezes in time the morals, values, interests, aesthetics, abnormalities of a culture.
What I’m going to say here, however, is going to completely contradict my answer to the question, Why do we love film and fashion? Sure, even the most surreal film contains the truth, the sincere raw intensity of the human experience. Even the most incoherent, avant-garde fashion show reflects human emotion, human eyes, human reactions. Film, even since it became a publically accessible thing, is us. There’s no way around it – by making movies at all, we leave a little bit of ourselves – our goals, our fears, our thoughts – behind in them. That’s why we love them. Fashion is the same. We love knowing there is a way to explain ourselves. We love knowing we aren’t the only ones who feel this or wonder that. We love discovering new things about ourselves and we love trying new things courtesy of others, trying them on for size.
And yet, one of the other most sincere reasons for why we love movies and fashion seems quite the opposite. The two mediums also share our ambitions, those things we yearn for most deeply but aren’t manifested in everyday life. There’s a wickedly complex veil over the worlds of film and fashion, as if they are inaccessible to the everyday man or woman. But it couldn’t be more personal. What we see on the screen is, often, what we wish to wear but can’t. It is a reflection of our desires. Sometimes, we don’t want to sit in a dark theater and see something out of our everyday lives: we want to escape, to see something foreign that was once only possible in our imaginations. The point is not that the plot feels possible, just that we believe, in this other universe, the chain of events on screen makes some sense. And without unique fashion to emphasize a crazy plot, movie goers may not buy it at all.
Just imagine any of the following movies with people wearing modern clothes. Rose DeWitt, sitting in first class wearing jeans? The Harry Potter kids, casting spells in Forever 21? Even surrounded by the appropriate sets and props, these movies wouldn’t seem quite so magical or quite so exotic without fashion following suit. Fashion has the ability to make the audience feel the full effects of a whole host of escapism moods. Without it, movies steeped in luxury, location, valor, surreal, and the truly fantastic would just fall flat.
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LUXURY: DANGEROUS LIAISONS (1988)
This remake of the 18th century-based drama, starring Glenn Close and John Malkovich, won an Oscar for its extreme costume design. The task certainly must have seemed daunting: French Revolution-wear (think: modesty, lots and lots and lots of fabric) that could allow seduction and delicious betrayal to shine through? Costume designer James Acheson’s trick was not to show skin to achieve the presence of sex; instead, the characters’ addiction to indulgence was emphasized by yards of luxurious material in rich colors like pumpkin, lemon yellow, and clean stark white. Audience members most likely would never have a chance to dress this way, but the richness of the whole environment makes high-class debauchery accessible to all (if only for a couple hours). A romantic story of love, schemes and epic drama would only be complete with extravagant clothing in tow.
LOCATION: THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY (1999)
Italian faux-vacation hotspot Mongibello is the location of this psychological thriller that transports its stars (Damon, Paltrow, and Law to name a few) back to 1950’s Italy. The world around them is beautiful as Tom Ripley works his ‘ugly’ magic, conniving his way into his targets’ lives. Marge’s long wide skirts and effortlessly tied button-downs at the start of the film are the epitome of resort fashion of the day – they look expensive and cause the audience to subconsciously crave her blueblood, warm weather traveler aura. Tom and Dickie’s characters physically manifest their differences with two distinct styles of their own. (Crisp collared button downs, tight swim shorts and thick rimmed glasses were just some of the items in the costume closet.) Dickie’s background – including a degree from Princeton and grooming to take over the profitable family business – is there in every thread of his clothes, a silent but ever-present reminder that Ripley (nor the audience member) will never attain exactly what he wants: to be Dickie, style and all.
VALOR: THE LONGEST DAY (1962)
The star-power behind this war film might be distracting if it appeared in any other movie: it features Henry Fonda, Robert Mitchum, John Wayne, Richard Burton, Sean Connery, George Segal…I could go on. But dressing all the men in their nation’s uniform, whether it be the United States, Britain, France or Germany, works to make them equals forced to live D-Day together as their ancestors did 20 years before. Especially in war movies, there is no choice but to dress the characters in anything but completely accurate military garb. When memories of combat, war terror, and lost loved ones are on the line, anything less would be disrespectful. When these memories don’t exist in the minds of audience members at all (those people who have never experienced war first-hand), accuracy is even more important. It brings the highlights of war to us and, while we can never experience pain or fatigue to the level of a serviceman, we feel exactly as we wish to feel when we begin to watch: as if we are there in the trenches, experiencing courage, strength, danger and loss with these heroic men.
THE SURREAL: A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971)
Though I admit I don’t have much experience in this department, I’m fairly certain that you don’t normally get roughed up on a dark street by a crew of men in white overalls and bowler hats. Milena Canonero’s cartoonish costumes in the midst of Kubrick’s sinister violence play with the audience’s psychological state in the way that Alex’s mind is plucked and prodded by the story itself. Dark maniacal crimes paired with patent leather skinny pants make Alex and his crew more than just a group of hooligans committing nightmarish acts: they are entertaining in their suspenders, tempting the movie-goer to be seduced by such rich and visually-appealing images. It is terrifying to think, even for a moment, that you actually like what is on screen, but that is what Kubrick mastered as a director. Beautiful horror, stylized crime, indulgent ideas of a dystopian future – it is nothing we could ever see and, more importantly, appreciate in real life. Such surreal anti-pairs certainly satisfy us as a movie-watching, escape-driven public.
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Fashion has long been more than a way to cover ourselves from dirt and indecency, just as film has forever been more than just images on a screen. Together, they are able to create worlds that stretch and satisfy even the most creative, most extreme imaginations, giving movie goers a way to live outside their means, outside their norms, and outside their wildest dreams.
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