My screen star styles
Iwas rethinking the wardrobe and was about to put the Minnie Cooper lace-up Edwardianstyle boots on Trade Me when I read a Guardian article about how much the latest iteration of the film version of Little Women has influenced New York fashion week.
Jacqueline Durran won the Oscar for best costume design for Little Women, and according to the Guardian piece, the legacy of the March sisters was writ large in the models as they marched down the NY fashion week catwalks dressed in crisp piecrust collars, capes with covered buttons, and sturdy lace-up boots. Hold those Minnie Coopers and put them back in the ’robe.
Not that I’m a slave to fashion, though of late, when I’ve been rewatching favourite films and television shows, I realise just how influential they were on my so-called style.
I can thank Greta Garbo, Ingrid Bergman, Marlene Dietrich and Lauren Bacall for my lifelong addiction to the beret. And nods must go to Ali MacGraw (Love Story), who rocked the cloche and all styles of hat.
The tights, short bubble skirts and denim jackets I started wearing were right
out of Desperately Seeking
Susan, care of Rosanna
Arquette and Madonna. However, I never took to wearing my bra on the outside of my clobber as seen in Truth or Dare aka In Bed with Madonna aka In bed with My Doona … (Cover).
During the hippy era, when long floral dresses reigned, my friends and I came under the dodgy influence of photographer and film director David Hamilton, whose photos of extremely thin young girls in floaty skirts and floppy hats became wall posters. It was thought he achieved the ethereal ‘‘Hamilton blur’’ of his snaps by covering his lens in Vaseline, but apparently that was not the case. (Accused of rape by one of his photographic models who was 13 at the time, Hamilton denied the accusation, and in 2016 was found in his Paris apartment dead by apparent suicide.)
Male friends in my group claimed to be immune to the vagaries of fashion, but quickly adopted the pastel T-shirt under-the-jacket and no socks with shoes look of Don Johnson from Miami Vice, and proudly attributed their let-go slob style to Jeff Bridges from The Big Lebowski.
To my shame, I remember seeing my first arthouse film, the name of which now escapes me, and being struck by the night apparel of the leading actress, who wore a white T-shirt and black knickers to bed. For about a decade afterward I slavishly copied that ensemble, believing I looked sexy and foreign, when really I was aping ‘‘The Dude’’ (Jeffrey Lebowksi).
Back in the day, you couldn’t get the clothes you saw in film and television and had to either wait a season for them to turn up in local shops, or make them yourself. Knitting needles turned out oversized off-the shoulder jumpers as worn by Jennifer Beals in Flashdance, and expert knitters were pestered by boyfriends to make replicas of the infamous Starsky & Hutch cardigan.
Down Under girls had to creatively cobble together No 8 wire threads to achieve that desired big-screen style so that the clothes on our antipodean backs looked ‘‘just like a bought one’’.
Our imperfect fan bodies could never look as good as film and television stars, which is why we owe a debt of gratitude to Marilyn Monroe, who at one time weighed 11 stone. I had two homemade Marilyn dresses, and thanks to the Wellington wind, never had to stand over a non-existence subway vent to get the skirt to blow up.