When Nicolae Ceausescu commissioned statues of himself for the streets of Bucharest he had them built at one-and-a-half times life-size rather than the giant scale favoured by other dictators. He knew that this size made them more potent, because they looked both imposing and realistic. Likewise, some of my favourite movie outfits aren’t the period costumes or the sci-fi flights of fantasy or even the Givenchy gowns, but the moments when fashion on film helps make a character feel both real, and larger than life. Meryl Streep’s wardrobe in Kramer vs Kramer is a great example: the clothes are never a scene-stealer, but this Burberry trenchcoat and boots encapsulates a kind of down-to-earth glamour that I love about this era. (See also: Debra Winger in an Officer and a Gentleman.) Photograph: SNAP/Rex Features
Costume designer Albert Wolsky was nominated for an Oscar for this film, so it’s not exactly an undiscovered piece of genius, but I love its restraint nonetheless. In contrast to the cartoonish voluptuousness and glamour of Mad Men (which is set in the same period), this is a portrait of a marriage in stifled, suburban collapse. I love the palette – ice-blue always looks amazing on screen, especially on that creamy blonde Grace Kelly/Kate Winslet colouring – and I love how Wolsky gives a contemporary visual connection to the character of April Wheeler by putting Winslet in a fitted, belted cream dress that is similar to the Roland Mouret dresses she often wears on the red carpet. Photograph: BBC FILMS/Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar
We are so used to the spiky, Highland-warrior Tilda Swinton that her role as a bourgeois, alice-banded wife in I Am Love is almost the most subversive she has played. This is a film with serious fashion credentials: the menswear is by Fendi, while Swinton’s wardrobe was specially created by Raf Simons for Jil Sander. Swinton explains the look better than anyone: “I think any one of us marrying an industrial tycoon of that kind in Milan would find ourselves daunted to assimilate ourselves,” she said. “You need to dress in a certain way in order to fit into the very precise grid that that world prescribes for people. Emma comes from Soviet Russia into a world that she really has no preparation for, so she has to learn the code. And so her wardrobe, to a certain extent, is everything.” Photograph: Allstar/Magnolia Pictures
Every Wes Anderson film is a fashion story in its own right. (There are those on the fashion desk who firmly believe that the palm-tree decorated vintage Louis Vuitton luggage trunks that feature in The Darjeeling Limited should have their own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.) Gwyneth Paltrow as Margot Tenenbaum is a kind of alt-heroine for teenage girls who are all thick black eyeliner and sarcasm but who have a sneaking obsession with glamour and gorgeousness. That outsize, slightly raggy Fendi fur with the fabulous Hermès handbag works so well because it feels like a sliding-doors vision of someone Paltrow might have been: an Upper East Side eccentric bluestocking. Actors sometimes say they capture a character in the shoes, but I feel like in this film Gwyneth gets it with the side-parting. Photograph: Allstar/TOUCHSTONE/Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar
Essentially, I think the world can be divided into people who understand that Clueless is one of the funniest, most genius films ever, and people who have a heart of stone. But that is perhaps just me showing my age, because Clueless is an affectionate portrait of the mid-90s, and, now that the 70s have been rehabilitated, the mid-90s are becoming fashion’s embarrassing past. Knee-high socks, A-line skirts, and a deep-seated accessories fetish that encompasses everything from pets to pencil cases (remember feather pens?): it’s all here. Photograph: Allstar/Cinetext/PARAMOUNT
Probably the darkest and best teen comedy of all time, and with the clothes to match. Look up the croquet scene on YouTube, if you haven’t seen this film for a while, and it will blow your mind. Shoulder-pads to play croquet? Now that’s what I call power dressing. Heathers fashion is all about clique dressing, and how teenage girls establish their hierarchy through the way they influence and ape one another. The three Heathers bring to the party unashamed bitchiness of the Dallas/Dynasty school, combined with an accessory obsession that surely blazes a trail for Sex and the City: white tights, corsages and (ahem) scrunchies. Hey, it was 1989.
Photograph: 20thC Fox/Everett/Rex Featur Photograph: 20thC Fox/Everett/Rex Features
One of the many blogposts about Michelle Pfeiffer’s wardrobe in Scarface is titled Dress and Excess, which gets it exactly right. Everything about Elvira – the sexually provocative cut of her dresses, the ostentation of her diamonds, the hungry jut of her ribcage, the glitter of her makeup, the emotional blank of her cat’s eye sunglasses – echoes the coked-up world she lives in, while the 30s cut of her dresses adds an extra layer of gangster’s-moll references. Photograph: UNIVERSAL/Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar
If you want to know why a generation of thirtysomething woman have grown up obsessed with leopard-print, I think this movie has a lot to answer for. When you watch this film, you fall in love with Alabama – blue sunglasses and ponyskin miniskirts notwithstanding. She is the reason I decided I always, always wanted to be blonde. (Although not that blonde, I’m not that mad.) As Alabama herself puts it, “I look back and am amazed that my thoughts were so clear and true, that three words went through my mind endlessly, repeating themselves like a broken record: you’re so cool, you’re so cool, you’re so cool.”
Photograph: Everett Collection/Rex Features Photograph: Everett Collection/Rex Feature
