At this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Chanel dressed the stars of Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague on the carpet. Zoey Deutch wore a striped and polka-dot bustier dress for the photo call; a white peplum gown on the carpet. It wasn’t just a red carpet play: the house also financially backed the production of the film, along with upcoming animation Arco and The Chronology of Water, long-time Chanel ambassador Kristen Stewart’s directorial debut.
More fashion houses are putting their weight behind films. Ami Paris sponsored Critics’ Week (a festival that runs parallel to that of Cannes) and co-produced Enzo. (Founder and creative director Alexandre Mattiussi has produced multiple films himself.) And Fondazione Prada just announced the creation of Fondazione Prada Film Fund, which aims to contribute to movie development, production and post-production, per the release. “Cinema is for us a laboratory for new ideas and a space of cultural education,” Miuccia Prada, president and director of the Fondazione, said. “For this reason, we have decided to actively contribute to the realisation of new works and to the support of auteur cinema.”
Luxury brands’ historical engagement with the world of cinema — and the cultural clout that comes with such overlap — is reaching a crescendo, but it’s been long in the works. Kering launched Women in Motion at Cannes a decade ago. Miu Miu kick-started its short film series Women’s Tales back in 2011. Chanel has also partnered with Tribeca Festival on a women’s filmmaker programme, Through Her Lens, since 2015, to provide support and mentorship to emerging filmmakers. For many of the aforementioned, their creative directors doubled as costume designers through Hollywood’s Golden Age.
Despite these long-running relationships, ever since studios shifted away from hiring fashion designers, fashion and film have largely run parallel to one another. Recently, though, they’ve begun to cross over, and last year, fashion and film became more intertwined than ever. Brands produced films (Saint Laurent led the charge at Cannes 2024, with three production credits — it was absent this year, but reportedly has more projects in the works); creative directors collaborated intimately with film directors on costume design (Jonathan Anderson, who was signed to United Talent Agency (UTA) in December, designed for every character in Queer, after his Challengers success); and more brands are ensuring their looks make their way to the big screen (Chanel helped fund and costume The End; Khaite loaned looks for Anora).
Appearing on-screen — and activating off-screen — enables brands to get their clothes in front of viewers in a way that is more elevated and sticky. After all, a film stays with you far longer than an Instagram post or billboard.
“With brands like Gucci and Prada having supported film and cinema for a long time, it was always bubbling under the surface,” says costume designer Heidi Bivens, who worked in fashion before shifting to film projects from Spring Breakers to Euphoria. Now, brands are clocking onto the fact that they can — and should — directly engage with film on a deeper level. “There’s so much potential that has not been tapped into yet,” she says. “Brands and companies are starting to understand the value. It’s been a long time coming.”
The turning point
The pandemic was the point at which things began to shift away from fashion and towards a deeper engagement with film, Bivens contends. “Everyone was at home, watching films and TV, not having their usual feed of fashion coming through,” she remembers. “Magazines were on pause for a while. Any sort of online content like photography and advertising that would put brands in public consciousness were paused and on hold. But there was enough content in the pipeline for film and TV that people were able to fill the void that way.”
Since Covid, consumers have become increasingly fatigued by the algorithmic echo chambers they spend so much time scrolling through. Film offers a fresh point of discovery — one with more context than a square on a screen. “A well-timed [Instagram] Reel or carousel might generate engagement, but can you remember what you liked on Instagram yesterday?” asks Sasha Mills, integrated creative at female-led creative consultancy Pacer. “A great film, on the other hand, will always have a life beyond the screen.”
Queer director Luca Guadagnino made clear the possibility of — and the value in — this approach, Bivens says. “He definitely paved the way for larger brands to understand the value in bringing in a fashion designer to consult or create original costumes for a project,” she says of Anderson’s recruitment for the project.
For Cynthia Merhej, designer of the brand Renaissance Renaissance, her goal was always for her pieces to break out of typical fashion outlets, like magazines. She relayed this to her publicist, David Siwicki. By 2023, she was on board to design some of the wardrobe for the Durga Chew-Bose film Bonjour Tristesse, starring Chloë Sevigny. Chew-Bose was well positioned to bring Merhej into the fold — a writer as well as a director, Chew-Bose was previously editor-in-chief of Ssense. (It’s where she knew the brand from; Siwicki then connected the dots, and she introduced Merhej to costume designer Miyako Bellizzi.)
Though there’s proven value, at this stage, it may still be challenging for emerging and independent brands to take advantage of this avenue, Merhej flags. “It’s not cheap to put yourself in a film,” she says. “You need a huge budget.” The only way Renaissance Renaissance was able to do so is because it has its own atelier in Beirut, Lebanon. “The way we operate is like a mini house,” Merhej explains. “We do all our patterns. We do cutting, sewing, everything here, which most young designers don’t have access to.” Without this, unless the film had a major budget, she wouldn’t have been able to rely on external cutters and sewers.
Rules of engagement
Fashion houses with the pockets to pull it off have typically tied themselves to bigger budget films, through pulling more famous stars and making a bigger splash upon premiere.
Where luxury houses’ money would be better placed is behind smaller, independent films, Bivens says. “These smaller, under-$10 million projects are the films where fashion brands could really get in bed with the production in a real way,” she says, hopeful that brands will get involved from the physical production phase through release. Bivens envisions a production process where a designer (or multiple designers) get intimately involved with the team, from the director to the production designer to the costume designer. “To comb through their script and find all the places in the story where you could plug in brands that feel authentic to the narrative,” Bivens says.
But, experts caution, larger brand tie-ins can’t be at the expense of world-building. A film can’t turn into a luxury brand advertisement. Bivens recalls moments when producers have asked her about borrowing from ‘XYZ’ brand that they know an actor is an ambassador for. “A lot of the time, it’s not right for the character,” she explains.
Anderson’s approach to Challengers offers a blueprint, Mills says. (With the caveat that Anderson was the costume designer; not a producer, he did not financially contribute to the film. Nor did Loewe.) Though Anderson outfitted the whole film, he didn’t solely incorporate his own designs. “Zendaya’s rich lady Chanel espadrilles, for example, were a great nod to her changing status throughout the film — it didn’t only feel like one big branded moment for him,” she says.
Fashion’s cinematic universe
The impact of fusing fashion and film has big potential. “Whether it be in offline (and online) discussions, on red carpets, or press tours, the halo impact of any moment of great cinema is not to be underestimated,” Mills says. But this halo will only come to fruition if the original content resonates, Siwicki cautions. Merhej believes that this authenticity is the reason Bonjour Tristesse worked for Renaissance Renaissance. “It’s coming from a very genuine place,” she says. “Otherwise, I don’t think it would have gotten buzz.”
Those that do generate buzz can run with it. That is what Anderson did post-Challengers: Loewe sold the “I Told Ya” tee that Zendaya and Josh O’Connor wear on-screen for $330, (alongside a $690 sweatshirt). It sold out fast. And even for those that don’t directly commercialise the collaboration — Merhej didn’t — similar pieces of the designer’s existing collections sell off the back of the film’s publicity.
Aside from selling clothes, there’s major opportunity for brands to expand on storytelling behind the scenes. Bivens points to all of the content Prada produced around Elvis, for which Mrs Prada worked with costume designer Catherine Martin and director Baz Luhrmann on the looks. It’s all documented on the brand’s website.
TikTok content
It translates well to social content, too. Loewe leaned into this with Anderson’s films, posting TikToks of the Queer cast in Venice (for the film festival premiere) and Challengers-esque content of girls in Loewe sunglasses and “I Told Ya” tees watching tennis. The Challengers account commented “I told ya” with a wink. The latter got 3.6 million views — above Loewe’s account average.
This was how Bivens recruited Anna Sui to create the high school uniforms for This Is Them, a film by Sophie Edelstein that she’s co-producing. Bivens pitched Sui that the making of the costumes is equally as interesting to viewers and fans of the brand.
Merhej can attest. And now, after sharing the ins and outs of designing for Bonjour Tristesse, she’s going full circle: co-producing a film that filmmaker Camila Freiha wrote based off of Renaissance Renaissance’s last collection, which will feature the brand’s pieces. Siwicki jokes that she’s now discovering the real joy of being a producer: finding money. “Story of my life as a designer, too,” Merhej laughs.
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