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For many contemporary designers, movies were an introduction to the power of fashion. And whereas most children were focused on the plot, they were often more interested in the visuals and \u2014 in particular \u2014 the clothes. Maximilian Davis, the Milan-based creative director of Ferragamo, for example, remembers being fixated on the color palette of the 1999 Stanley Kubrick drama \u201cEyes Wide Shut\u201d when he watched it as a preteen; Willy Chavarria, who designs his namesake brand in New York, first saw the 1973 horror classic \u201cThe Exorcist\u201d when he was 12 and was entranced by a khaki dress. As adults, both men have watched these films again and again, weaving elements from the big screen into their collections. Here, they and seven other designers talk about the cinematic fashion moments that continue to inspire them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
It\u2019s the quintessential fashion movie. Faye Dunaway\u2019s clothes, by the legendary costume designer Theoni Aldredge, are remarkable, and watching Dunaway, as the <\/strong>fashion photographer Laura Mars, shoot Lisa Taylor, the model of the moment, in Columbus Circle wearing slit culottes was my first introduction to a photo shoot. The disco soundtrack, the Barbra Streisand theme song and the fact that it featured the top hair and makeup people of the time \u2014 <\/span>John Sahag and Joey Mills \u2014 made the whole thing seem like an actual slice of the New York fashion world. Plus how many movies have a cameo by Calvin Klein in the opening credits? The film\u2019s version of big-city glamour will always be a part of my fashion vocabulary.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n When I was in college at Central Saint Martins, someone shared a still from the film\u2019s wedding scene and I fell in love with it. The movie is loosely based on the life of an Armenian poet, depicting the rituals of his daily life, and every shot looks like a Renaissance painting. The very first frame is of juice bleeding from pomegranates onto a beige tablecloth, and it\u2019s incredibly rich but also natural; that\u2019s how I like to work with colors. There are a lot of really gorgeous reds, pink and purples, which are in my palette, too. It\u2019s a good reminder of the universal nature of colors and how they live in our subconscious: white as purity, red as passion and so on. In showing the evolution of a character, they\u2019re really important.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The cinematography and lighting are incredible, and my dad\u2019s from Hong Kong, where the film\u2019s set, so I was attracted to it straightaway. It\u2019s influenced some of my collections, like spring 2015, which was focused on my Chinese grandmother. The tactile florals on Maggie Cheung\u2019s character, which have this fragility that contrasts with her strength and stoicism, were inspiring but, more than anything, I was taken in by the pace of the film, the way the characters speak to and look at each other and the overall restraint. Some pieces in that 2015 collection were very pared back \u2014 I did a black dress with an irregular hem and a marabou feather on it, for example \u2014 while others were overtly feminine. Sometimes I put the soundtrack on when I\u2019m working.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Between the ages of 7 and 10, I spent weekends with my grandmother in Trinidad and we\u2019d watch films together, back-to-back, from 6 p.m. to midnight. She allowed me to watch 18+ movies, so I was exposed to a lot. When we watched \u201cEyes Wide Shut,\u201d I didn\u2019t understand everything that was happening, but the colors, lighting and mood stayed in my mind. I returned to it during lockdown when I was working on my first collection for my own brand, Maximilian. I was looking into my Trinidadian roots and exploring Carnival, and there are so many headdresses and masks in \u201cEyes Wide Shut.\u201d I also appreciated the simplicity of the costumes and their silhouettes \u2014 from Nicole Kidman\u2019s undergarments to her camel coat. I watched the film again a few times when I was designing my first collection for Ferragamo. It included black evening wear, and the runway was made of red sand. Even the audience watching the models walk felt very \u201cEyes Wide Shut.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n I saw this movie when I was 12 \u2014 which, at the time, was crazy. Now, I think a 10-year-old could watch it and be like, \u201cOh, the special effects are so bad.\u201d But it was such a big deal when it came out, and I loved it \u2014 and as I got older, I grew to love it more. It\u2019s not just the story, which is essentially about good versus evil; the aesthetics are also really beautiful. I love the color palette of the costumes: Chris MacNeil\u2019s pale khaki dress with a cream-colored ribbed turtleneck has been a direct inspiration for me. The way William Friedkin directed it also influenced me artistically \u2014 the slow buildup, what\u2019s said without speaking. He creates a mood to tell a story. I know it\u2019s a little weird, but I\u2019ll sit and watch \u201cThe Exorcist\u201d probably once a year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n I\u2019ve seen this film at least ten times. Raf Simons, who was at Jil Sander at the time, did the costumes and it was filmed at Villa Necchi [the modernist house designed by the architect Piero Portaluppi], which I love and visited many times when I lived in Milan. I\u2019ve used the pistachio green from the garden room in my collections. And there are so many other beautiful colors in the film, like when Tilda Swinton\u2019s character is walking to the dry cleaner in a bright orange dress with an orange Herm\u00e8s bag. But the appeal isn\u2019t just aesthetic. Swinton\u2019s character is Russian like I am and, as an immigrant in the United States, I also have a longing for my mother country and culture. Watching the movie brings back feelings from my childhood.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n When the film came out, I was working at Gucci with Tom Ford and we were all crazy about it. Wes Anderson was bursting onto the scene as this person with such a specific color palette who created these playful, otherworldly sets. The characters are off their trolleys, but we felt connected to them because those kinds of characters actually exist in the fashion world. Gwyneth Paltrow is so iconic as Margot, an eccentric posh girl in a fur coat. We were using real fur at Gucci back then, and I did a lot of research based on that coat. When I was at Chlo\u00e9, I did a collection around tracksuits, and the movie\u2019s ones were definitely a reference. As vintage as it looked, the film felt really relevant to contemporary fashion at the time. Margot looked like she\u2019d just come out of a Prada show.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n There\u2019s so much about this film that speaks to me. It\u2019s about a quintessential Milanese family, and I lived in Milan for four and a half years. It\u2019s also about a bourgeois woman who comes undone because of desire, and you see that in how she presents herself. How people dress is a kind of language, and that\u2019s so beautifully expressed but also questioned in this film. The style is very archetypal: the matriarch dresses a certain way, as do the daughter and the housekeeper. But it\u2019s the spirit of the women and their complexity that I always come back to. When I\u2019m designing, I think a lot about the bourgeois Jamaican woman who presents really properly but also goes to Carnival or a dance hall party to be totally sexual. I\u2019m always exploring how those extremes can exist within one person.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The French director Quentin Dupieux\u2019s movies are short but radical. I also like that they\u2019re low budget. It\u2019s not the budget that makes a movie high quality, and that\u2019s true of fashion, too. To me, his movies are more like paintings in that each one focuses on a single subject. They remind me that every detail counts, and that art can and must be a space for experimentation. I really love \u201cLe Daim,\u201d or \u201cDeerskin\u201d in English, which is about a man who buys a suede jacket and becomes obsessed with it and violent with people he meets who wear a similar one. Dupieux takes small, real-life subjects and adds something to make them absurd. That\u2019s what I like to do with clothing.<\/p>\n These interviews have been edited and condensed.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nColleen Allen, 29: \u201cThe Color of Pomegranates\u201d (1969)<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
Simone Rocha, 38: \u201cIn the Mood for Love\u201d (2000)<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
Maximilian Davis, 29, of Ferragamo: \u201cEyes Wide Shut\u201d (1999)<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
Willy Chavarria, 57: \u201cThe Exorcist\u201d (1973)<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
Henry Zankov, 44,<\/strong> of Zankov: \u201cI Am Love\u201d (2009)<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
Clare Waight Keller, 54, of Uniqlo: \u201cThe Royal Tenenbaums\u201d (2001)<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
Rachel Scott, 41, of Diotima: \u201cTeorema\u201d (1968)<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
Marie Adam-Leenaerdt, 28: \u201cLe Daim\u201d (2019)<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n