Fashion and film have been inextricably linked for the past century, with designers drawing inspiration from the silver screen and auteurs going to great lengths to secure the perfect costumes for their characters. Would Holly Golightly have become a pop culture sensation without Hubert de Givenchy’s sophisticated designs? And what would Belle de Jour be without Yves Saint Laurent or Barbarella without Paco Rabanne? Below, Vogue presents 14 of the best designer and director collaborations of all time.
Dior in Stage Fright
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Image: Getty
Alfred Hitchcock’s films are some of the most stylish in history: just think of Tippi Hedren’s mint-green suit in The Birds, Kim Novak’s black gown in Vertigo and Grace Kelly’s dresses in To Catch a Thief. While the legendary costume designer and eight-time Oscar winner Edith Head dressed many of his leading ladies, the Marlene Dietrich-starring 1950 noir Stage Fright marked a turning point. “No Dior, no Dietrich,” the German actress told producers and so the Master of Suspense hired the designer to create her costumes. There were wasp-waisted suits, tulle gowns and feathers galore—ideal for a woman playing a flamboyant West End singer who is accused of a monstrous crime.
Balmain in And God Created Woman
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Image: Getty
Roger Vadim’s frothy melodrama that turned his then wife Brigitte Bardot into a star overnight features her sauntering around the sun-dappled French Riviera in search of potential suitors. Bardot is Juliette, a young woman whose sexual appetite and lack of inhibition shakes up a sleepy fishing village. With its ravishing visuals and controversial sexual politics, the film caused a stir upon its release in 1956, but Bardot remains its main attraction. Frequently barefoot with pouty lips and tousled hair, she is a vision in linen shirt dresses, boat-neck tops and cinched-in pencil skirts designed by Pierre Balmain. The couturier also brought his signature brand of understated glamour to Bardot’s next movie, the 1957 comedy La Parisienne.
Chanel in Last Year at Marienbad
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Filmed in pristine black and white, Alain Resnais’s Golden Lion-winning drama is a defining work of the French New Wave. It centres on a mysterious couple played by Delphine Seyrig and Giorgio Albertazzi, who meet at a baroque hotel. Seyrig’s elegant wardrobe, comprised of little black dresses, long chiffon gowns and feather-trimmed capes, was created by Coco Chanel. The designer was no stranger to making costumes, having spent much of the 1930s in Hollywood dressing the likes of Gloria Swanson and Ina Claire, but 1961 marked her return to the big screen and the result was spectacular. Coco Chanel’s successor, the late Karl Lagerfeld also paid tribute to the movie, most memorably during his SS11 show where models walked around a replica of the gardens at Marienbad.
Givenchy in Breakfast at Tiffany’s
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Image: Getty
A cocktail dress with a wide-brimmed hat, a double-breasted orange wool coat with kitten heels, a beige trench paired with a matching headscarf—it’s no surprise that Blake Edward’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s is still the most referenced film in fashion. It was of course Hubert de Givenchy who created Audrey Hepburn’s principal wardrobe for the film. The designer and actress met during the production of the 1954 film Sabrina, and collaborated again on Funny Face (1957), Love in the Afternoon (1957), Charade (1963), Paris When it Sizzles (1964), How to Steal a Million (1966) and Love Among Thieves (1987). Holly Golightly’s era-defining little black dress remains Givenchy’s most celebrated creation, fetching £467,200 at auction in 2006.
Yves Saint Laurent in Belle de Jour
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When it came to creating subversive costumes for Séverine Serizy, the bourgeois housewife who spends her afternoons working as a high-class prostitute in Luis Buñuel’s 1967 classic, Yves Saint Laurent was the perfect choice. The designer dressed Catherine Deneuve in austere black frocks, pillbox hats and a series of showstopping coats in fur-lined leather, grey wool and black vinyl. For a film that recently celebrated its 50th anniversary, it feels remarkably modern.
Paco Rabanne in Barbarella
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Many of Paco Rabanne’s space-age creations have been immortalised on film—among them Audrey Hepburn’s shimmering disc dress in the 1967 comedy Two for the Road—but the costumes in Roger Vadim’s 1968 zero-gravity romp Barbarella are unbeaten for sheer inventiveness. Jane Fonda plays the titular space adventurer on a mission to stop an evil scientist from destroying the galaxy. It’s worth watching for the fashion alone: chainmail two-pieces, studded bodysuits and thigh-high plastic boots accessorised with a cat-eye flick and bombshell bouffant.
Karl Lagerfeld in Maîtresse
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Image: Alamy
While burgling a Parisian apartment, a small-time thief discovers the torture chamber of a professional dominatrix. So begins Barbet Schroeder’s 1975 film starring Gérard Depardieu and Bulle Ogier, which soon descends into a subterranean world of sadomasochism and deprivation. Karl Lagerfeld, then at the helm of Chloé, was on hand to design Ogier’s provocative costumes. By day she wears louche loungewear, while late nights call for leather trousers, elbow-length gloves, a purple cape, a blunt black wig and powder-blue eyeshadow.
Giorgio Armani in American Gigolo
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The image of Richard Gere smoking in a belted camel coat in American Gigolo has come to define Giorgio Armani’s polished aesthetic. When the Italian designer was tapped to create powers suits for Paul Schrader’s 1980 drama about male escort Julian Kaye, he was still in the early stages of his career. Kaye’s impeccable tailoring caught the eye of the fashion industry and launched Armani’s career. It also sparked the designer’s lifelong love affair with the silver screen. Since then he has dressed the cast of The Untouchables, Christian Bale in The Dark Knight, Brad Pitt in Inglourious Basterds and Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street.
Azzedine Alaïa in A View to a Kill
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Few Bond girls were as well dressed as May Day, Max Zorin’s villainous henchwoman played by Grace Jones in John Glen’s A View to a Kill. While Roger Moore’s other love interest, the delicate and doe-eyed Tanya Roberts, wears floaty dresses in pastel shades, Jones is no damsel in distress. Her wardrobe is a lesson in executive realness featuring pinstripe blazers, bodysuits and hooded bandage dresses, many of which were designed by Jones’s friend Azzedine Alaïa. The King of Cling’s exaggerated silhouettes and strong block colours were perfect for a woman who was Bond’s equal in every sense—whether she was beating men to a pulp or parachuting off the Eiffel Tower.
Prada in Romeo + Juliet
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Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 reimagining of Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers sees the story relocate to a modern American suburb complete with gun violence and feuding mafia families. To dress the eclectic characters who populate Luhrmann’s world, costume designer Kym Barrett chose garish Hawaiian shirts, leather vests and sequinned ballgowns. Dolce & Gabbana outfitted the Capulet clan but when it came to Leonardo DiCaprio’s Romeo, only Prada would do: his navy-blue wedding suit was the first piece of clothing the director and designer ever collaborated on. 17 years later, Luhrmann, Prada and DiCaprio would reunite once again for The Great Gatsby.
Jean Paul Gaultier in The Fifth Element
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The enfant terrible of French fashion has worked with Pedro Almodóvar to design clothes for Bad Education and The Skin I Live In, but the costumes he is best remembered for are those in Luc Besson’s 1997 sci-fi epic. Between Milla Jovovich’s bandage bodysuit, Bruce Willis’s rubber vest, Chris Tucker’s rose-lined satin top and Gary Oldman’s sunset-hued, super-villain suit, it’s impossible to pick a favourite. Gaultier’s keen eye for detail is evident throughout: don’t miss the cartoonish McDonald’s girls or the mysterious Diva Plavalaguna, which inspire Halloween costumes year after year.
Raf Simons for Jil Sander in I Am Love
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From Call Me by Your Name to A Bigger Splash, Luca Guadagnino’s films are packed with stylish characters—none more so than the 2009 romantic drama I Am Love, which stars the director’s long-time muse Tilda Swinton as a woman who marries into the upper echelons of Milanese society. Raf Simons, then creative director of Jil Sander, provided Swinton’s wardrobe: boxy shift dresses, jewel-tone knits and sleek coats that reflect the refined minimalism that was a hallmark of his tenure at the house.
Rodarte in Black Swan
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It was Black Swan’s Oscar-winning leading lady Natalie Portman who introduced director Darren Aronofsky to Kate and Laura Mulleavy, the sisters behind Rodarte. While costume designer Amy Westcott (who previously worked with Aronofsky on The Wrestler) created most of the film’s looks, she collaborated with the design duo on a number of elaborate tutus, including the feathered confections Portman wears on stage in the final scene. The designers’ mood boards referenced everything from the day-to-day wardrobes of dancers in the American Ballet Theatre to films like The Double Life of Veronique and The Piano Teacher.
John Galliano in Atomic Blonde
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Charlize Theron plays a MI6 operative tracking down double agents on the eve of the collapse of the Berlin Wall in David Leitch’s 2017 thriller. Using the photographs of Helmut Newton as a reference point, costume designer Cindy Evans selected sharp suiting, monochrome dresses and 1980s-inspired separates from some of the industry’s most prominent fashion houses. Dior lent her a cherry-red coat from their archives, Burberry provided a signature trench and Saint Laurent a pair of studded ankle boots. But the piece that made the biggest impact? The high-shine white coat Theron wears in one of the earliest scenes, which John Galliano designed especially for the film.
Also read:
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The best on-screen celebrity couples in recent movie history
From Ranveer Singh to Heath Ledger: 30 incredible on-screen transformations
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