Films and fashion

Still from Marie Schuller's fashion film 'Visiting Hour'. Model:me

Films and fashion. No, I do not mean fashion films, though the genre is now pretty well established and fashion films have become very sophisticated. ShowStudio is the home of fashion film in the UK,  but there is definitely competition.
What I really mean to talk about here is films in which the world of fashion is at the very least background to the narrative or where there are some unforgettable fashion moments, eg the Anita Ekberg  Trevi fountain moment in Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita, dressed (if I remember correctly) in a Balenciaga gown or Audrey Hepburn in her Givenchy dresses and hats in Breakfast at Tiffany's.
The fashion industry is central to the story in Funny Face (1957) starring Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire, a film in which Hepburn plays the role of a reluctant model and also displays her skills as a dancer, partnering the great Astaire. In Coco before Chanel (2009) another Audrey, this time Tatou plays the role of Coco Chanel in her early years and wears her designs. The devil wears Prada (2006) based on the book by Lauren Weisberger, is a now famous satire of fashion magazines such as Vogue, with Meryl Streep sporting elegant, short, grey hair as Miranda Priestley, the devilish chief editor whose character is vaguely based on the formidable Anna Wintour, and whose way of dismissing people is an icy 'That's all' with no thankyou ever uttered. Zoolander (2001) is a parody of male models and of the industry overall and Pret-à-Porter (1994) has that famous emperor-new-clothes-style scene with nude models  on the runway and a host of celebrities appearing in cameo roles throughout the movie, whose setting is a Paris fashion show.

Nude models on the runway Pret-à -Porter

There are more examples, I mentioned just the ones that came to mind.  The most recent film whose locale is the modelling world in Los Angeles is Neon Demon (2016), only just released, which presents fashion modelling in a different light, mingling it with vampirism - such an interesting metaphor, I definitely have to see this movie.
The truth is that fashion and films have had a very long, yet somewhat insufficiently acknowledged relationship, feeding into each other, with movie stars often becoming fashion icons.
Take Audrey Hepburn, for example. With Roman Holiday and Sabrina she became wedded to fashion. Beyond her grave. Back in 2006 the company Gap was permitted to use the jazz dance sequence Hepburn performed in Funny Face , the idea being to emphasise the company's ethical approach to marketing through an endorsement by UNICEF, of which Hepburn had been ambassador prior to her death. But surely this was not the only reason why they wanted  Hepburn in their campaign. As well as being known for her charity work, Hepburn was synonymous with  fashion and style and this was certainly not lost on Gap's marketing and PR department.

Hepburn's jazz dance in Funny Face

The biennial festival curated by Fashion in Film,  a research unit at Central St Martin's, University of the Arts,  has indeed highlighted the  relationship between fashion and film through arranging screenings of significant movies.  Their  latest initiative Wearing time: past, present, future, dream  will launch in Winter/Spring 2017 and will run across major UK venues including The Barbican, Tate, Curzon cinemas, Central St Martin's, Rio, Prince Charles Cinema and The Horse Hospital. As the festival curators say
"probing into four different conceptions of time – future, past, present and dream – the programme asks what concrete manifestations of time fashion and clothing enable: what kind of chronologies and histories? What origins and memories? Echoes and shadows? Projections, visions or premonitions? Fashion’s own relation to time may be vital, and intimate, but it is far from transparent. Film, the art of time passing, helps illuminate some of its complexities".

Definitely something to look forward to.

(I will be on holiday until 19th August)