Fashion Brief
Most on-trend movie: Inherent Vice
You know a trend is happening when it is not only on catwalks and street-style blogs but in acclaimed films. So it is with fashion’s current fascination with the 1970s – and with polo necks in particular – which Joaquin Phoenix’s character wears so well in Inherent Vice. Add in the movie’s wealth of faded denim, and Phoenix’s mutton-chops (just weird enough to inspire a new facial-fuzz trend among style-conscious men with beard ennui?) and fashion and film’s planets have clearly aligned.
Photograph: Allstar/BLUMHOUSE PRODUCTIONS
Most auspicious T-shirt: Whiplash
We all knew JK Simmons’ Fletcher was a wrong ’un the second he appeared on screen. Why? As Simon Cowell and Ricky Gervais know, his tight black T-shirt is regulation-issue wear for megalomaniacs. Particularly megalomaniacs who like jazz.
Photograph: Allstar/PATHE/Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar
Most meaningful tailoring: Selma
Selma’s David Oyelowo – who plays Martin Luther King – delivers a perfect performance while wearing faultless suits. Shirt collars are pressed, tie knots are symmetrical, tie pins are in precisely the right place. King was an elegant man, and this depiction of his clothes is more than simple cinematic glamour: it is a statement of strength and identity.
Photograph: c.IFC Films/Everett/REX/c.IFC Films/Everett/REX
Most poignant plaid: Boyhood
Nothing screams “teenager” like a faded plaid – particularly when teamed with questionable facial hair. So when Mason, in Boyhood, pulls on this check shirt it is a sartorial sign that childhood is over, that life is rushing past – for him and for us all. Sigh.
Photograph: NEW REGENCY PICTURES/Allstar/NEW REGENCY PICTURES
Most sinister sunglasses: Gone Girl
Arguably, Anna Wintour and Karl Lagerfeld pull it off. But in most cases wearing sunglasses indoors is ill-advised – you’re always going to look dodgy. So it is when Desi Collings (Neil Patrick Harris) makes his entrance in Gone Girl, teaming his terribly 1990s frame-free glasses with naff chinos and a navy-blue blazer. This is going to end badly.
Photograph: Jack English
Most buttoned-up: The Imitation Game
Keira Knightley has been on top red carpet form this awards season – making couture maternity wear very covetable – but the character she plays has sartorial game, too; her prim knitwear echoes the uptight society the characters existed in. This particular graphic green-and-beige number feels very JW Anderson for Loewe.
Photograph: FOX SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES/Allstar/FOX SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES
Most eloquent outwear: Birdman
Edward Norton looks brilliant in coats. In Birdman, his painstakingly chosen outerwear – the military surplus jacket; the peacoat with its carefully popped collar – are exactly what an ageing hipster worrying about his decreasing virility would wear. His character, Mike, is in crisis – something those expensive-looking pieces only serve to highlight.
Photograph: Moviestore/REX/Moviestore/REX
Best tonsorial gag: The Grand Budapest Hotel
Trust Wes Anderson to give dusty, decrepit Madame D (Tilda Swinton) a bride-of-Frankenstein beehive so stiff it requires its own towering, bespoke hat. Even her hair is dried up and difficult.
