ANTIDOTE SELECTS: FASHION FILMS

 

Antidote explores the intimate relationship between fashion and film through Rick Owens, Jean Paul Gaultier, and Maison Margiela. A searing line of dialogue, an unforgettable costume, or an uncanny character has the power to inspire some of the most iconic collections. Throughout the years, designers and directors have used their mediums to stitch a cultural zeitgeist we are all represented in. Join us as we take a deeper look at these creations born from cinema.

 

MAISON MARGIELA AND SASHA KASIUHA'S "NIGHTHAWK" (2024)

Maison Margiela shapeshifts into a new art form through film in “Nighthawk.” Directed by Sasha Kasiuha, this documentary captures the process behind Margiela’s Artisanal 2024 collection, designed by John Galliano. The project explores how the collection became a cultural moment and went viral. Pat McGrath’s porcelain doll makeup, Duffy’s Belle Époque hairstyles, and Galliano’s garments coalesced in a show produced by La Mode en Images to create a theatrical moment. Kasiuha pairs the look of 1980s horror films with raw GoPro footage from inside the atelier, so unfinished pieces sit beside the finished ones. The result is a rare, unpolished view of how a couture collection comes to life stitch by stitch. It is Margiela’s gift for the uncanny, captured on film, where the beauty lies in the process as much as the garment.

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JEAN PAUL GAULTIER AND LUC BESSON'S "THE FIFTH ELEMENT" (1997)

French filmmaker Luc Besson's 1997 "The Fifth Element" set the standard for sci-fi costume design. While not a traditional fashion film, Jean Paul Gaultier designed more than 1,000 costumes for the futuristic motion picture. Bright, playful, and unapologetically sensual garments dress a young Milla Jovovich as her character Leeloo traverses through 23rd-century New York. Leeloo's white bandage-style bodysuit grew out of Gaultier's underwear-as-outerwear collections, and would be replicated for years to come. She later changes into a simple white crop top with high-waisted metallic pants and a perforated harness that matched her bright orange bangs. Gaultier continued to thread orange throughout the collection with Leeloo’s love interest, Korben Dallas. Bruce Willis’ character sports a ribbed orange vest and a tactical back strap fit for an action character, while Gaultier’s signature androgynous style shines through Chris Tucker’s character. Futurist radio host Ruby Rhod is strapped into a flamboyant, skin-tight leopard jumpsuit that exudes 90s Jean Paul Gaultier pandemonium. The designer would go on to create looks for several other films. The impact of such a vivacious and charged-up wardrobe solidified Gaultier's versatility in design.

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RICK OWENS AND FRITZ LANG'S "METROPOLIS" (1927)

Austrian film director Fritz Lang, otherwise known as the “Master of Darkness” in cinema, created a silent masterpiece in the late 1920s. Released in 1927, “Metropolis” imagined a dystopian city divided by class. Wealthy individuals became leaders of thought and populated the sunlit surface of this futuristic world. This fictional city was designed with magnificent Art Deco skyscrapers, suspended highways, and glittering promise. Simultaneously, the oppressed working class was forced to live in a dark subterranean city, where they operated the machinery that powered the surface.

Rick Owens drew heavily on this film’s brutalist architecture and avant-garde costume design. In his Spring/Summer 2020 “Tecuatl” collection, Owens explored his Mexican heritage through towering geometric headpieces. These pieces drew on strong visual motifs from Lang’s work and on Owens’ own Spring/Summer 2019 “Babel” collection. For “Babel,” Owens built a centerpiece resembling an iconic tower design by Russian architect Vladimir Tatlin. Although Tatlin’s tower was never officially constructed, Owens’ version helped tell the biblical story from Genesis, in which humanity attempts to build a tower to the heavens, resulting in divine intervention and confusion. Owens used this 1920s tower imagery and biblical motif to convey how modern society mirrors the same conflict seen in “Metropolis.”

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These pairings represent how cinema and fashion feed one another. Margiela finds beauty in the process, Gaultier turns playfulness into spectacle, and Owens builds monuments from a silent-era classic. Each designer treats the screen as an extension of the runway, and the result is work that outlasts its season.

 

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