cinematic style - Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain

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So you know how you know who your first crush was? The one whose poster you plastered all over your walls, the one you fell asleep looking at, the one you secretly (or not so secretly) planned to marry. 'My future husband' you would say. It almost doesn't matter who it is. It could be Leo, it could be a Backstreet Boy, it could be Seth Cohen (a thousand teenage girls of the noughties sigh). Well, for me, that first crush, last crush, always crush was Jake Gyllenhaal. Oh Jake. You have no idea how bad it gets. I wish I knew how to quit you. Not even when my friends tell me that his eyes are too close together (on the weekend, while in an absolute dive bar, my oldest bud said to me 'look I'm not saying that if he took his clothes off in front of me I'd say no, but seriously, on a scale of one to cyclops he's like a 7, maybe 7.5'). Not ever. I have loved him since Donnie Darko. I saw Prince of Persia three times in the cinema. And don't even get me started on Love and Other Drugs...

I remember seeing Brokeback Mountain. I remember falling in love. I remember double denim. I remember crying so hard I thought people might ask me to leave. At the 2006 Oscars I remember wanting so bad for Brokeback to win the best picture award. I remember feeling gutted when it didn't. But there was Heath and Michelle (in that dress!) and Ang's speech and Jake being hilarious. My sixteen year old self wondered how such a beautiful, haunting, overwhelming film could miss out on the top honour. A slave to awards shows even then, I had not yet realised how political they could be. I still had stars in my eyes. I'm lucky that that first realisation didn't kill the whole enterprise. I laughed along with the rest of them at 36mafia 1, Scorsese 0. I hoped, rather than knew, Ang Lee's (and Heath's and Jake's) time would come. I remember crying like a baby when Heath died, thinking the whole time of this.

What's so good about this wardrobe? it's the cowboy thing, firstly. I've always been drawn to a good felt hat and have recently adopted double denim as my unofficial wardrobe of spring. Shearling I know well. But what I am drawn to at the moment is the whole 70s vibe. I have recently watched a few movies set in the 70s (Rush, Jobs), and god, it was a sexy era. The open shirts, the tight jeans, the big belts, the big hair.  Men looked masculine. They acted masculine too - rode horses, smoked cigarettes, punched things - but most of all they looked the part in their denim and shearling and shirts. I think the normalcy of the wardrobe in this does much to advance character development. The torment of the Ennis and Jack is only heightened by their relative anonymity. They look the part, they just can't act it. That tension between reality and fiction, the tension of living a lie, is always the major theme I take away from the film. I think the costumes express that tension so, so admirably.

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so cool

the sartorialist

What made him so cool? Was it the way he carried books; gripped by the spine, resting on his shoulder? Was it the fact that he had stubble always, even after he shaved? Was it the way he would lean back on one arm and look at you and not say anything at all? You remember so much about it, you remember how it started and how it ended, you remember every glass of wine and every keystroke. You remember the sound of his door opening. You wish you could forget the sound of it closing. But when you saw him, that first time, that last time, what made him so cool? Was it the hair, the jeans, the white tee shirt, the smile? Was it the way he held a pint of beer? Was it his name, his stories, his laugh? There really was something about him. You hadn't met anyone so cool. And he really was. When you think about, and I mean, really think about it, you know it was, more than anything else, that leather jacket, the way it creased at the elbows, the little tear at the collar, the pockets you put your hands in when it got cold, the zip you played with while watching the trailers at the cinema, the smell - that particular smell of oil and cigarettes that all motorcycle jackets have - and the way it felt when you put it on.

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cinematic style - Ryan Gosling in Drive

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I was reading an article today in an old Elle UK about the big, imagined love that poisons all of your relationships. Since for so many women nowadays that big love is Ryan Gosling (all the guys I know exclaim agressively that they don't understand what the appeal is but I think it's a case of the lady doth protest too much) I thought that I might finally get around to doing that cinematic style that was requested more than a year ago (sorry Bianca!). Ryan Gosling (hey girl!) in Drive.

I remember being so excited about this movie before it even came out. Carey broke up with Shia when she was filming it, and there were all sorts of hilarious, innuendo-driven stories on the Daily Mail about how 'Carey Mulligan turns to Ryan Gosling for comfort after her painful breakup'. I was expecting a Mr and Mrs Smith kind of love story to emerge from the film, which I imagined would be sensual in a slow-burning, Los Angeles kind of way. I guess it was in some sense - they had great chemistry and, well, that kiss, and Carey famously described making the movie as a process of 'staring longingly at Ryan Gosling for 3 months' - but I mean, once you see this you expect just a little bit more when Gosling is involved. I saw the movie by myself at my favourite little cinema, which is a short walk up the top of my street. It was so hot that day and sitting in an air-conditoned cinema with an ice-cold coke seemed like the only viable option. Watching that movie, with the slow, steady movement of the camera, and that dreamy-synth soundtrack went one step better. Even with all the violence, the blood splatters, the fast driving, it was like a swimming in an ice-cold pool in the middle of summer.

This is probably the one film in the entire of the cinematic style series with the least costume changes. The driver goes through a roster of contempo-casual getups - denim jacket, baseball cap, endearingly grubby white tee shirt - until that final look, the one he spends most of the movie in, the silky driving jacket with the diamond quilting and the collar popped, the leather gloves, the sunglasses, all of which become steadily more and more blood-stained and filthy as the film progresses. It's funny because I've always thought Ryan Gosling is a bit of an everyman. He looks like that guy you used to know, he's almost a little bit nondescript, but isn't that what makes him extraordinary? I feel the same about this wardrobe. The whole point is that the driver just slips under the radar. People don't notice him until it's too late. It's almost too much to bear, when it's accompanied by the roar of an engine, or the way he looks at Carey Mulligan. The understatement of the clothes is key. It's almost like anti-costume. The film was hyper-stylish, like hyper-real, but at the same time those simple, understated costumes worked to make the character seem real, even thought he's about the furthest from my own personal experience than almost anything else. I think that's the mark of good, no, great costume design.

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cinematic style - Anne Hathaway in Love and Other Drugs

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So I'm not a particularly huge fan of Anne Hathaway - I'm not a hatha-hater, but I just wouldn't see a movie because she's in it, in the way I would for, say, Carey Mulligan or Natalie Portman - and, let's be honest, I definitely didn't see this movie for Anne Hathaway. I saw it for Jake. Always Jake. But right now I'm in the throes of a 90s revival so big it threatens to take over my wardrobe (cami slip dress: check, birkenstocks: check, overalls: check check check) and I can't help but fall in love with the grungey, grown-up my-so-called-life-y style that Annie is wearing in this film. (or not wearing, when it comes down to it). 

I just finished reading the new J.K Rowling book - the one she wrote under a pseudonym - and there's a bit in it where the main character Cormoran Strike describes the apartment of model Ciara Porter as messy and girlish, like the apartment of a teenager left unsupervised. That's how I see anne hathaway's wardrobe in this movie. She's living that dream of adolescents the world round: nobody to tell me what to do. That's why in some sense her ludicrously lovely apartment (struggling artist she is not, judging by that sprawling warehouse space, but then movies never accurately represent socioeconomic realities when it comes to living space, do they?), is endearing and charming in its messiness, and her wardrobe, which is legitimately the kind of stuff Angela Chase used to run around in works, even though she's a grown-up woman with grown-up responsibilities. Maybe that was also a little bit of the 90s - when overalls were the hippest thing since slice bread and tartan shirts with tights with rips in them were trendy. So many of those 90s trends are, in some sense, ageless. Women of all ages run around in pared-back CBK minimalism and look fantastic - even the super youthful Ashley Olsen, or perhaps especially her - and I think the reverse is true for this grungey style, to a point. It's a youthful look but it's one that seems to work across ages. You could take elements of this look and wear them at 15, 35, 55 and 85 ('Fabulous at Every Age!'). 

Maybe it's the sartorial mood I'm drawn to at the moment. I have started to seek out clothes that appeal to my tactile senses - I want soft denim shirts, thick knitted sweaters, the nubby worn-in patches on flannel shirts, the ease of slipping into a pair of overalls, the sheer comfiness of those german sandals. That's a 90s thing, too. And I look at Anne Hathaway's wardrobe in this movie and I see just that: silky chinese dressing gowns, pin-tucked broderie anglaise, the ridges of burgundy corduroy (!!!) and the classic feel of a woolen camel coat.

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cinematic style - Ben Affleck in Good Will Hunting

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A question I often ask myself, every time I watch Good Will Hunting, is would the film have been as successful, as meaningful, as resonant, if Ben Affleck and Matt Damon hadn't been real life friends? Because it is, it really is, a great film. The kind of fairytale story that never gets old, that makes you laugh and cry, the perfect coming-of-age tale that speaks to an audience wider than its immediate contemporaries, which is the ultimate dream of the coming-of-age tale. I am obsessed with coming-of-age stories. Almost all of my favourite books and movies fall into this genre. Did I have a stunted youth? Do I dream of always being this age, of always wanting to find myself? Maybe. I think the real answer is that, aged 22, I am coming of age. Ask me in ten years and I'll probably be interested in something different. But for now I devour those stories of learning and loving, of loving learning, of growing up and of understanding. And Good Will Hunting is such an exemplar of the genre.

I do think its success comes from the fact that you know Ben and Matt are a) real life friends and b) writing from experience. They grew up together in Boston and went to drama class together. Matt - the cleverer, clean-cut one - went to Harvard, even though he was still a bit of a boozer and a waster, and Ben chased his dreams all the way to sunny, desperate LA. When they started writing Good Will Hunting in 1993-1994 they were still relative unknowns (read this fantastic oral history of the movie if you haven't already!). It is one of those classic Hollywood legends that Ben and Matt were almost ousted from their lead roles for Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio respectively. Imagine this movie without Ben and Matt... just try. Imagine this movie without that ridiculous hair, that scrubbed-clean skin, those strong jaws. Imagine the Oscars that year without Ben and Matt with their mums on their arm, yelling from the podium "thank you to the city of Boston!" It's impossible. It's as impossible as it is to separate the real life from the fiction. Ben and Matt, best mates from Southie, one brilliant and charming, the other charming and brilliant.

I've always loved Ben best in this movie. Chuckie was a true friend. He picked up Will every day from his house, he drove him around, he fought with him in a fight and laughed with him in a bar. And he supported Will, he wanted more for him, and he said it true. Sure, that wardrobe of tracksuit pants in a veritable smorgasbord of nylon and acrylic doesn't speak 'haute couture', but there's something great about his laidback style. The sloppy joes and thick jeans and steel-cap work boots, the fleecy coat and thin gold chain, the adidas pool sliders at home (well, this was the 90s!). I love the way he is totally comfortable in his clothes. He looks the same - don't you think? - that same overdrawn stance, stooped down a little in the shoulders, like he's too big for his body. And those tracksuits just hang off him in the way clothes hang off the backs of beautiful boys when they're young and brazen. Maybe Will was the good guy but Chuckie was the spark guy. Again though, it's so tangled up with Matt and Ben in real life circa 1997. Before Bourne, before Penelope and Jenny from the Block, before Sarah Silverman and Jimmy Kimmel, sixteen years ago when they were just two kids in tee shirts and jeans on the streets of Boston (how you like them apples?), drinking beer and smoking cigarettes and dreaming big, big dreams.

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ps. don't forget to enter my Ray Ban Wayfarer giveaway! It closes tonight!

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cinematic style (sort of) - men in uniform from various

Tom Cruise in Top Gun // Liam Neeson and Bradley Cooper in The A Team // Jake Gyllenhaal in Jarhead // Josh Hartnett, Ben Affleck and Alec Baldwin in Pearl Harbour // Richard Gere in An Officer and a Gentleman

Who doesn't love a man in uniform?

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cinematic style (sort of) - Daniel Craig's glasses in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

 screencaps by grande_caps

The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo was a good movie. It was well shot, darkly lit, clearly edited with a whip and just generally a bit of a thrill, which movies like this ought to be if they possibly can. I got onto the Girl With a Dragon Tattoo gravy train really late, despite having a swedish crime fiction mad mother who was pressing all manner of Wallander and the likes on me daily, but I actually picked one up from my local vinnies for $2, read it in one sitting about a week before the movie came out and generally lived and breathed Lisbeth for about a month. Then, like all good crime fiction, that initial shock - that initial press on the bruise - faded, and I was able to read it again, pausing for meals and bathroom breaks, slower this time, purely for pleasure. 

Speaking of pleasure - and no, Daniel Craig, we're not talking about you being the sexiest bond, not really - how great are his glasses? And not just their shape - a little round and a little square, a little rimmed, and a little thin, kind of that perfect balance between thick, deliberately nerdy frames and delicate, deliberately nerdy frames. A little internet snooping and it turns out they're by Berlin-based brand Mykita, and come in a veritable rainbow of colours. No, I'm not even really that interested in the frames. I'm more interested in the way that Daniel Craig wears them - pushed up on his head, clamped between his teeth, and hanging from one ear, dropped down under his chin, resting against his clavicle. Another little bit of internet snooping and it's clear that - aside from Vulture, who called it his glasses game - I'm the only person who cares about this. Like most things Craig does, it's that perfect blend of nonchalance and "don't-give-a-fuckery" with a conscience sense of style (don't tell me that his Bond is all "do I look like I give a damn?"). The second time I saw the movie - this time so that I could enjoy it, rather than spend half the time curled up in the cinema shielding my eyes - I spent most of the movie watching his glasses move, so casually, from his face to his forehead, his forehead to hanging down, hanging down to his mouth, his mouth to his face. It was a fascinating quirk I couldn't get enough of.

Of course, his style in this is pretty good too. It's kind of like an older man's version of COS, all swedish simplicity, well-tied scarves, the occasional perfectly placed beanie and all in a colour palette of murkiest neutrals - this is a crime thriller, remember! - that I can definitely get behind. But in David Fincher movies it's never really about the costumes. Even in The Social Network it felt like all those hoodies and thongs were secondary to the incidental quirks of the character that brought about those hoodies and those thongs. Which is what makes Mikael's glasses so interesting - I couldn't quite work out what made him do it. Because he's fidgety? Because he's nervous? Because it's learned behaviour from when he was defaming people and trying to hide his guilt? Who knows. I like it, though.

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ps. anyone who needs a bit of a craig fix, just watch this. It will make your day. Seriously.

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cinematic style - Kirsten Dunst in How To Lose Friends and Alienate People

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I loved this film when it first came out. I loved Simon Pegg, who even though seemed slightly Americanised, was so silly and British I couldn't help but smile, I loved New York, the city I had only just left for the first time at the start of the year and who held a particular hold on my imagination, I loved the depictions of the fickle world of magazine publishing, I loved the banter and the wit and the cocktail drinking. But most of all, most of all, I loved Kirsten Dunst's adorable wardrobe. 

As I mused in a (much) earlier blog post (how things change and how they stay the same!) her style in this movie was such an extension of her off-duty personal style it was almost as if she had styled herself. Of course, in the four years since this movie came out Kiki has changed - she broke up with Jake, she went to rehab, she got a bit of a potty mouth, she started smoking - and her style has gone a bit rough around the edges. Less Lula, more Self Service. But there's something about her - I think it's that coltish grace, that blonde, blonder hair, her particular mixture of froideur and sensuality - that makes her immensely watchable on film and the perfect clothes horse. She wears clothes really well. Always has. I remember adoring her on the pages of my old Teen Vogues, in chucks and bretons with her off-kilter toothy grin. I loved her in Wimbledon in blazers and pretty shirts. I still love her now in trench coats and sofia coppola bags in awful, awful movies.

This movie was all about the shirt. Dunst's character Alison is rarely seen out of one, and her collection runs the gamut of Peter Pan collars, boatnecks, button downs and florals. It was working wear, but with a slightly casual lilt. I think what I like most about Alison's wardrobe was that she never looked dressed up. That was kind of the point, as her character was only at the magazine to pay the bills while she was writing her novel (of course I loved her!). You could tell that from her wardrobe. Her heart wasn't really in it. She paired skirt suits with tee shirts (I tried that one the day after I saw the movie), she wore vintage dresses to fancy events, wore very little makeup and left her cropped blonde mane to its own devices. The result was charming, as Dunst herself is charming - in this movie, in life. It was the look of a New York City Girl who didn't want to subscribe to the New York City regime (yet still reap all of its benefits). It's the kind of career look that I always dreamt of, never corporate, never stuffy, as casual as physically possible. Although the offices of Sharps Magazine was hardly a relaxed office, it seemed like Alison, in her milkmaid braids and baggy silk tee shirts, was just wandering in from the weekend constantly. It was like a whole working week of casual fridays. That has always been my future office attire dream.

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