Today the world learned that David Lynch—the legendary filmmaker who reveled in telling dark, surreal stories—passed away at 78. In a career that spanned more than four decades, the director—who was also a musician, a visual artist, and an actor—established such a signature aesthetic that Lynchian became a shorthand adjective for things that were odd, disquieting, and, above all, dreamlike. It’s not at all surprising that over the years many fashion designers sought inspiration from his movies, like Blue Velvet, which starred Isabella Rossellini as a glamorous lounge singer, and Wild at Heart, with Laura Dern and Nicolas Cage playing a pair of young lovers on the run. But perhaps most enduring is Twin Peaks, a TV drama that was like a soap opera on acid and introduced the world to Agent Dale Cooper, played by Kyle MacLachlan, as he tried to find out who killed Laura Palmer.
The Lynchian world runs so vast that the inspiration has manifested itself on the runway in myriad ways. Sometimes all a designer needs to do is cue up a specific song, like Rei Kawakubo did at the Comme des Garçons spring 2016 Blue Witch show when she played music from Blue Velvet or at the Creatures of the Wind spring 2017 show where designers Shane Gabier and Chris Peters invited the musician Julee Cruise to perform the theme song to Twin Peaks. “You can’t just do that to somebody! I cried through the entire show!” Caroline Polachek reportedly exclaimed afterward.
Other designers, like Raf Simons and Undercover’s Jun Takahashi, have instead taken on his iconic imagery and adorned their clothes with image stills. At the fall 2017 MSGM show, Massimo Giorgetti indulged in the minutiae of the Twin Peaks world, with pine trees, owls, and tulle skirts as a nod to Laura Palmer, as well as blue roses, which was the code word for a special FBI case investigated by agents Dale Cooper and Chester Diamond.
