From Wild at Heart to Belle de Jour, Queen & Slim, and Doom Generation, cult films are an antidote to our current era of cringeworthy celebrity coupledom
WILD AT HEART
Ruched, hot pink, and just clinging to the contours of her body, Laura Dern arches her back and grooves into Nicolas Cage, her bodycon in dangerous liason with the actor’s pop-collared, reptilian-skinned blazer. The scene comes around the halfway mark in David Lynch’s 1990 Wild at Heart, which is perhaps the Lynchiest of Lynch’s films. It’s the work of costume designer Amy Stofksy, however, that makes the memory of Wild at Heart resonate some 30 years later, immortalised in leopard-print leotards and skimpy bralettes; lacy, grandma tights and red patent heels; black sphincter-like slips and a slash of red lipstick.
via filmaluation.comTHE DOOM GENERATION
Gregg Araki’s seminal 1995 export The Doom Generationfollows the hyper-sexual, drug-buzzed relationship between Amy Blue her boyfriend Jordan White, who pick up a handsome third on their travels. Blue, played by Rose McGowan, is dressed in a punk-rock wardrobe to reflect her abrasive coming of age, donning Dr. Martens, deep-cut vintage sundresses, and oversized leather jackets. Jordan wears a flannel shirt, frayed jeans, and a cowboy hat, reflective of the couple’s “naive innocence” as Araki told Dazed in 2015.
via impassionedcinema.comNATURAL BORN KILLERS
Mickey and Mallory Knox. Their story, Natural Born Killers, a murderous rampage through the US wasteland, was originally banned in Ireland for their obsession with carnage. This blood lust could be read on the wisp of Mallory’s crimson scarf, her head-to-toe red outfit, and Mickey’s sheer t-shirt and gaudy western leather jacket. The jewel in this film’s sartorial crown, however, is Mallory’s “tramp stamp”, a Kafka-like beetle which slithers over her studded belt like a dark mark.
ROMEO AND JULIET
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is lauded for its prowess over verse and pentameter, but style wise, it was incredibly dour – full of spindly child catcher shoes and saggy knee britches. Baz Lurhmann’s 1996 retelling, however, offered an amped-up, sexed-up feast. With Juliet dressed in flouncy fabrics and virginial dresses, she was the angel sent for Romeo’s knight in shining armour. Elsewhere, costumes came by way of Prada and Dolce & Gabbana, who dressed the sparring Montagues and Capulets, respectively.
via ew.comTHE VIRGIN SUICIDES
When Trip Fontaine famously got the ick with Lux Libson, she was wearing a pyjama-like prom dress. He abandoned her, post-coital, for no reason other than he suddenly became sick of her. That, and something to do with latent homosexuality, apparently. This was one of Sofia Coppola’s great studies on girlhood, which she projected in the reflection of Fontaine’s amberous aviators, his beaded necklace resting taut on his clavicles and shrunken, leather trucker jacket tugging at his six-foot frame.
CHRISTIANE F.
Set in a train station in former West Berlin, Uli Edel chronicles the true story of a 13-year-old’s descent into drug abuse. The tearaway’s relationship with her then-boyfriend and his freewheeling, heroin-taking clique has provided ample inspiration for designers today. Like Raf Simons, who printed the sullen faces of the film’s adolescent protagonists onto shirts, coat patches, and jean pockets for his AW18 collection, subverting the tropes of youth culture by mining the darkest corners of the human psyche.
THE ROYAL TENANBAUMS
Now considered quite Gucci, Margot Tenanbaum (Gwyneth Paltrow) is the chain-smoking ingenue married to neurologist Raleigh St Clair, from whom she hides her smoking and the fact that she is having an affair with Eli Cash (Owen Wilson). Always with a blonde bob, some vintage-looking fur coat, and moneyed loafers, she makes a refined foil to Cash’s cowboy cosplay, which is all stetson fedoras and fringed leather jackets.
Courtesy of Universal PicturesQUEEN AND SLIM
Costume designer Shiona Turini was challenged with creating only two outfits for Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie Turner-Smith, who go on the run after killing a racist police officer in Melina Matsoukas’ 2019 feature Queen and Slim. So while the film takes a microscope to American racial politics, so too does it fashion. Having pulled references from iconic Black activists and the glory days of hip hop, Turini dressed Queen in a zebra-print dress and snakeskin boots, and Slim in a velvet Sean John tracksuit.
Courtesy of Block 2 PicturesIN THE MOOD FOR LOVE
In the Mood for Love is what happens when somebody else finds love, with neighbours Mr Chow and Mrs Chan starting their own affair after finding out their respective partners had been cheating. While neither of them act on their (possible) connection, they mope about and roleplay arguments with their spouses. Clothing proves a narrative device, with the restraint of each character’s underscored by their wardrobes. The duo figure out they are the victims of an affair because of Chow’s tie, which comes from the same place Mrs Chan’s husband buys his tie. Mrs Chan’s high-necked cheongsam dresses are stiff and unforgiving but as the film progresses, and their love deepens, their colour schemes begin to blend.
via critic.deTHE HUNGER
The Hunger sees an icey David Bowie and Catherine Deneuve romp about, feeding on the blood of goths and luring hopeless victims into sex-fuelled death traps. The camp, comedic level of blood lust at the heart of Tony Scott’s horny vampire flick was the subject of Alexander McQueen’s SS96 show. There, models staggered onto the runway like drunken revellers, writhing in grotesque shapes and flipping off the front row. Shirts were stained with bloody handprints, claw-slashed tops and spliced trews came together like gaping wounds, and transparent bustiers were sent out filled with real life worms.
Courtesy of Channel 4MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE
Set in 1985 in working class London, My Beautiful Laundrette was a forward-thinking exploration of race and sexuality in Thatcher’s Britain. Originally devised for television, Hanif Kureishi’s first screenplay was shot on a low budget in only six weeks and traces the budding romance between the son of a Pakistani migrant, tasked with managing the family laundrette, and a fascist-sympathising punk played by a baby-faced Daniel Day-Lewis. Together, they strive to make the business “as big as the Ritz”, with Day-Lewis sporting a stiff blonde quiff and plenty of swaggering 80s looks – all oversized bombers, slouchy knits, ripped denim, skinny little scarves, and thuggish waist coats.
Splendor, 1999SPLENDOR
Gregg Araki’s 1995 romcom opens with a dismembered voice. Over a rush of lips, teeth, and groping hands, it says “love is a mysterious and baffling thing” as the camera pans across intertwined limbs and the naked bodies of two guys and a girl lying in bed. It’s perhaps not as transgressive as other Araki films, in that it is fizzy and comedic, but makes an early case for sexual freedom and polyamory. The boys spike their hair into bleached hedgehogs as they don shrunken lacy vests, dainty aprons, latex trousers, and mesh baby tees, as women wear wiggle dresses, see-through halter-necks, and a frosting of blue eyeshadow.
BONNIE AND CLYDE
Starring Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty, the 1967 Bonnie and Clyde fictionalises the real life couple’s notorious crime spree during the Great Depression. As they whizz between banks and along wide country roads, fashion becomes something of an accomplice, with Clyde dressed in dapper tailoring and imposing fedoras, while Bonnie dons tweed pencil skirts, trench coats, silk camis, and delicate scarves. Over time, the duo have become the totemic partners-in-crime, reimagined by Beyoncé and Jay Z on their titular 2002 track – albeit with crop tops and snapbacks.
I AM LOVE
Though it’s set in 2009 in Milan, the demure, minimalist, and completely chic wardrobe of Luca Guadanigno’s I am Love imbues the film with a certain timelessness. Costume designer Antonella Cannarozzi commissioned Raf Simons to create the clothing that Tilda Swinton wears, plucked mostly from his AW08 collection for Jil Sander. As Swinton, who plays the wife of a rich businessman, embarks on an illicit affair with her son’s friend, her prim, 1950s-style dresses and pearl necklaces belie a torrid world of secrets that harbour beneath Italy’s aristocratic circles.
BELLE DE JOUR
With costumes designed by Yves Saint Laurent, Catherine Deneuve plays Séverine, a bored housewife and sexual masochist who takes a job working afternoons at a brothel to satisfy the darker desires left unfulfilled by her picture perfect marriage. Director Luis Buñuel makes the decision to never portray her in the nude, but instead dresses her in close-necked, buttoned-up shift dresses, bubblegum pink dressing gowns, pristine white tennis sets, and knitwear with precisely-rolled cuffs – speaking to the bourgeois masochist within.