Screen share: Films and shows that sparkle with fashion

Still from ‘Emily in Paris’
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

So obviously Emily in Parisis not a deep and meaningful dive into cultural differences and otherness. It is frivolous fun with fabulous fashion. The venerable Patricia Field, who clothed Carrie and her friends through 94 episodes and two movies of Sex and the City and made Manolo Blahnik and Christian Louboutin household names, designed the first two seasons of Emily in Paris.

While there has been some grumbling over Marylin Fitoussi (who took over from Field) trying too hard in Season 3 of Emily in Paris, Season 4 features more hits than misses — loved that mesh shoe! Fields also dressed Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt among others in The Devil Wears Prada. Apart from Streep’s snow-white hair and weaponised handbags, it was glorious to watch Hathaway morph from earnest journalist into that sleek vision in black.

Costume dramas have the most chance of showing off their designer chops and there are a slew of them on screens big and small. In the last six months itself you have eye-popping silhouettes of Scarlett Johansson in the space race rom-com, Fly Me to the Moon as well as Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway slaying it with their pencil skirts, gloves, and purses in the atonal Mothers’ Instinct.

The suits and dresses featured in Mad Men, telling the life of an inscrutable advertising executive in the ‘60s, have achieved a cult following. The men’s skinny ties and suits and the women’s stiff, constricting lines give way to flowy silhouettes as the show progresses through seven seasons. This side of the pond, there is Bridgerton set in an alternate Regency period with the siblings sporting lovely gowns with delicate detail and Downton Abbey, set between 1912 and 1926, which is as much about the upstairs-downstairs lives in the stately house as it is about flapper fashions.

The Crown about the reign of Queen Elizabeth II from 1947 to 2005 is very on point with fashion. Starting with the young Queen and her sister, Margaret’s suits, to Lady Diana’s Revenge Dress, all the fashion highlights of the era are faithfully recreated.

Shows and movies about fashion icons, while being well mounted, are not so much about fashion as about the people behind it. So the melancholy The New Look about Coco Chanel and Christian Dior is more about the effect of WWII on the fashion industry than Dior’s celebrated New Look even though the clothes are lovely including the dolls’ line when the war created shortages.

Halston, with Ewan McGregor taking a break from Jedi duties playing the designer who created the relaxed silhouettes for women in the 70s, featured some original costumes and others created for the show. Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci telling the story of the decline of the fashion house, while beautifully dressed with vintage pieces was more family drama than couture.

While clothes do not make a film or a show, there are some looks that remain in one’s mind long after the credits roll, including Nicole Kidman’s lovely blue top in The Perfect Couple. And watching the shenanigans of lovely-looking people dressed in delicious outfits is just another kind of comfort watch.

From India Press cinema team, a fortnightly column recommending films and shows tied to a mood, theme, or pop culture event.