A film lover’s guide to fashion

In this cult record of London’s restless fashion scene in the swinging-sixties, David Hemmings plays a frustrated fashion photographer who unwittingly captures what might be a murder while photographing two lovers in a park. Studded with cameos from Jane Birkin, Vanessa Redgrave and Veruschka, amongst others, Blow Up captures the decade at its most seductive and sinister—technicolour glamour shadowed by uncertainty and pervasive ennui.

Daniel Day-Lewis delivers a swansong performance  as Reynolds Woodcock, a renowned couturier in this 1950s set drama, inspired by British designers like Norman Hartnell. Into his meticulously ordered world steps Alma, a shy German waitress, who becomes both muse and disruptor, unravelling the rules that govern his life even as she falls under their control. Dreamlike and tense, the film is an ode to obsessive love, both in fashion and in life—with gowns every bit as seductive as its story.

As the fashion world mourns the death of Giorgio Armani, this short film looks back on the city that shaped his vision. Armani’s cinematic love letter to Milan, lensed by his friend Martin Scorsese, reveals how deeply the legendary designer drew inspiration from his surroundings. As Armani himself states: “it is a process, searching for elegance—knowing where to look, and finding it, hidden away.” Elegance to him was the very essence of Milan—it whispered through the streets, and he would spend a lifetime transposing it onto the runway.

Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder—the bad boy of German cinema—The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant inspired, amongst others, Tom Ford, who has designed entire collections around its stunningly baroque costumes. Set entirely in fashion designer Petra von Kant’s claustrophobic bedroom, the all-female cast enacts a story of violent obsession, female power struggle, and a lesson in exquisite loungewear.

Much of the visual richness of Luca Guadagnino’s Io Sono L’amore (I Am Love) can be attributed to the work of Antonella Cannarozzi, who collaborated with Fendi and Jil Sander to make the costumes. A loose re-telling of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, the film is less a story about fashion than one told through it. Milanese high society is under the microscope—a suffocating world of appearances and controlled beauty. Tilda Swinton gives one of the performances of her career as Russian-born émigré, Emma Recchi, whose gilded life begins to crack as she enters a passionate love affair with a young chef.

One of the first designer profiles to make waves in mainstream cinema, McQueen is a ravishing portrait of British designer Alexander ‘Lee’ McQueen, pieced together from archive footage and intimate interviews with friends and family. Directors Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui trace McQueen’s dark and visionary life, from the start of his career to the relationships that sustained him, and the events leading up to his death—accompanied by a commanding score which makes the film fitting for the big screen.

Fashion without the drama. Dries is a heart-warming insight into the life and creative spirit of Belgian designer Dries Van Noten. After three years of convincing, the camera-shy designer allowed German filmmaker Reiner Holzemer to spend a year with him as he created four collections. We move from his atelier, where he meticulously sifts through fabrics for weeks on end, to his garden, where he picks flowers with a roving eye for detail. Low-key, and immensely likeable, Van Noten is the kind of designer you would happily sit down for a cup of tea with.

Kristen Stewart gives a haunting performance as Maureen Cartwright, a young American navigating grief while working as a personal shopper for the demanding German model Kyra (Nora von Waldstätten). Part psychological thriller, part ghost story, the film earned Olivier Assayas the Best Director award at Cannes in 2016 for its chilling exploration of loss, loneliness, and the dark glamour of Paris’ fashion scene.

A Hepburn classic. Shy bookstore clerk Jo Stockton is whisked to Paris by fashion photographer Dick Avery (Fred Astaire) to become a model. In some of cinema’s most charming fashion moments, Hepburn floats through Paris dressed in Givenchy—so enchanted by his designs that she later asked him to create all her future costumes, saying, ‘His are the only clothes in which I am myself.’

An absurdist classic of French arthouse cinema, Who are You, Polly Maggoo? satirises the fashion industry and its glamorous pretensions. Directed by William Klein, who began his career at American Vogue, the film stars Dorothy McGowan as Polly Maggoo, an American supermodel in Paris swept up by media obsession and the delusional whims of a lovesick prince