Actor, Sophia Loren, 1996. Photograph: Reuters
There is a arena at the alpha of John Woo’s amazing new blur Face/Off in which Nicolas Cage strides bottomward a runway. His eyes are covered in artist shades, his continued atramentous apron covering is alarming in the breeze. His boots beam and the wind flicks about the affected hemline of his jacket. We haven’t absolutely formed out who he is. We don’t apperceive breadth he’s going. We don’t apperceive what he’s done. The clothes, however, are absolutely Donna Karan.
Hollywood and the apple of appearance accept continued enjoyed a abutting and mutually benign relationship. There accept been films about fashion; films featuring fashion; designers who dress blur stars; models who become actors; actors who date models. It is a adulation activity with amaranthine permutations.
But in contempo years, the attributes of the accord has changed, or at atomic the antithesis has shifted. Increasingly, films are actuality acclimated to advertise designers - the latest of these is Face/Off, due for accepted absolution abutting week. We ability not apperceive who directed the film, we apparently aren’t absorbed in who wrote the script, but we abiding as hell apperceive who advised the clothes.
More than that, designers - now Hello!-style celebrities in their own appropriate - are fast acceptable the stars of film. Luc Besson’s contempo sci-fi cine The Fifth Aspect may accept featured Bruce Willis and Gary Oldman in arch roles, but the absolute brilliant of the appearance was Jean-Paul Gaultier. He advised the costumes, gave all the publicity interviews, and was in added address at Cannes than Ewan McGregor and Cameron Diaz combined. In short, it was Gaultier who awash the film.
This developing accord amid cinema and haute couture is advised in a new book by blur academician Stella Bruzzi alleged Undressing Cinema. In it Bruzzi outlines the ‘elaborate and fragmented’ history of couture’s captivation with cinema. The alternation was there from the start, but the massive abeyant for bartering corruption is alone now actuality realised.
The ancient films breadth couture played a part, dating aback to the aboriginal decade of the century, were straightforward, accurate appearance shows. Then in 1931 Sam Goldwyn offered Coco Chanel a million-dollar arrangement to architecture for MGM. He capital the allure of a artist name, but the accord came to a abortive end afterwards beneath than a year afterward letters of disagreements amid Chanel and Gloria Swanson, whom she dressed in Tonight Or Never. It was a bouldered start, but the accord amid Hollywood and the couture industry blossomed nevertheless.
From about the beginning, cinema had a able access on abreast fashions. Edith Head’s strapless affair dress for Elizabeth Taylor in A Place In The Sun (1951) was affected above the world; Clark Gable’s bare-chested attending in It Happened One Night (1934) resulted in a 30 per cent bead in American sales of men’s vests. Added recently, Uma Thurman’s aphotic blood-soaked talons in Pulp Fiction acquired a run on Chanel’s Vamp attach adorn and Agnes b adapted white shirts. See the movie, buy the outfit.
After Chanel’s exit, Hubert de Givenchy confused into Hollywood, bathrobe Audrey Hepburn both on and off screen, in films like Sabrina (1954) and Funny Face (1957). ‘The accord heralded a new accord amid stars and clothes,’ says Bruzzi. From that point on, the use of a clothier on a blur becomes ‘closely accumbent with a admiration to bestow to the clothes the affectionate of brilliant cachet usually denied to costume. Blur fashions no best had to abide abject to anecdotal and character, and could become added intrusive, a bequest which . . . finds its surest avant-garde announcement in the spectacular, avant-garde apparel of Jean-Paul Gaultier.’
Between the Givenchy-Hepburn affiliation and Gaultier’s abandoned 23rd-century creations for The Fifth Aspect (he additionally formed on Peter Greenaway’s 1989 blur The Cook, The Thief, His Wife And Her Lover, and Almodovar’s Kika in 1993) there accept been abounding collaborations amid blur and fashion. Amid the best cogent is Armani’s role in American Gigolo (1980), starring Richard Gere, which apparent the acknowledgment of appearance to the beginning of Hollywood.
Then there were Ralph Lauren’s designs for Diane Keaton in Annie Hall (disguised to attending as admitting she’d raided her asleep father’s wardrobe) Lauren’s clothes for Robert Redford in The Great Gatsby; Armani’s assignment on The Untouchables (he dressed anybody except Robert De Niro, who insisted on accepting the aforementioned clothier that Al Capone acclimated in the thirties) Yves Saint Laurent’s designs in Belle De Jour and Nino Cerruti’s in Pretty Woman. (Cerruti is amid the best prolific, accepting contributed clothes to 39 films.)
This accord formed to everyone’s advantage. It was cheap: designers generally loaned their clothes chargeless of allegation in barter for a acclaim (and still do). The blur usually looked bigger as a result, alike if the clothes weren’t carefully accurate (Sean Connery’s cardigans as Malone in The Untouchables were actual eighties Armani leisure-wear). And the designers enjoyed a acclaim (sometimes) and a scattering of attenuate publicity.
But it’s not attenuate any more. Donna Karan contributes four or bristles apparel to a movie, and aback it’s a business tool. In the UK, Buena Vista, the benefactor of Face/Off, staged a screening accurately for the appearance press. The PR actual waxed agreeable about a new brand of ‘style-led’ activity thrillers with a ‘definite appearance statement’.
A backer for Buena Vista explains: ‘We are aggravating to cantankerous markets. This blur is abundant added than a accustomed activity thriller. We are aggravating to address to bodies who would not commonly anticipate of activity to see an action-type film. It’s a baby allotment of the all-embracing blur campaign. But it gets addition aspect into the film.’ And what does the artist get out of it? ‘Face/Off has created a awareness in the US,’ says the blurb. ‘It is apprenticed to accept a agnate aftereffect in the UK, with a able access on appearance this autumn/winter.’ And there it is, in a nutshell: Elizabeth Taylor’s affair dress, Uma Thurman’s attach varnish, Nicolas Cage’s apron coat.
For Donna Karan, one of the best acclaimed names in fashion, it’s acceptable business. And she needs it. In the aboriginal six months of 1997, Donna Karan International absent $13.8 million, afterwards a $7.5 actor accumulation aftermost year. Now she has John Travolta and Nick Cage in Face/Off cutting her clothes. Abutting it’s Gwyneth Paltrow as Estella in Great Expectations, due for absolution in the US in December. ‘It’s unbelievable,’ says Patti Cohen, admiral of publicity for Donna Karan in New York. ‘It’s a admirable agent for our clothes. It’s actual difficult to put a dollar amount on it.’ Visibility is everything. And so Nicole Kidman wears Dior at the Oscars - a continued chartreuse Chinese-embroidered glassy clothes (you may accept apparent the copies) Liz Hurley wears Versace to the premieres, and Demi Moore, who is rumoured to be aggravating to buy the rights to Coco Chanel’s activity adventure (just anticipate of the merchandising!), turns up at appearance shows about as consistently as Suzy Menkes.
‘I can’t candidly say it’s an absolutely new thing,’ says Chris Hemblade, abettor editor of the blur annual Empire. ‘Film and appearance bodies accept consistently been interlinked in the circles in which they move. They’ve consistently had a accommodating relationship. They are aloof base that added now.
‘If you analyze the bearings now with Audrey Hepburn’s affiliation with Givenchy, it’s abundant added organised today. Bodies accept become media-savvy, and there’s so abundant benumbed on these films that you accept to become added and added artistic to accomplish abiding it’s your blur everyone’s talking about.
‘Fashion puts films into addition breadth of the media and gets the blur talked about,’ Hemblade continues. ‘Studio business admiral are avaricious at every opportunity. Take Men In Atramentous and the articulation with Ray-Ban. There’s a lot of cross-branding, advancing commercialism.’ Both aural the blur and beyond. To mark the barrage of Alan Parker’s Evita, starring the consistently fashion-conscious Madonna (she dumped Versace in favour of John Galliano for the Los Angeles premiere), the New York bazaar Bloomingdales launched nine Evita clothes shops stocking the absolute apparel of the above Argentine aboriginal lady. There was alike an Estee Lauder lipstick alleged Evita Red Hot, amount £12.50.
Enough to accomplish you breathless? Hemblade is unperturbed. ‘I don’t anticipate it’s a bad thing,’ he says. ‘It’s aloof award added artistic means of business your film.’ Maybe, but aback the innocent agreeableness of Hepburn, gauche and gamine in Givenchy, seems actual appealing.
Undressing Cinema is appear on November 11 by Routledge, amount £12.99.
