1. THE MEMORY OF THE “TERMINATOR 2” LEATHER JACKET
I have a fairly clear memory of the first film I saw in the cinema. It was in 1991, I was 13 and I went there with a class friend. At that age, I lived in a small, quite ordinary town in Mayenne. No cinema, not many activities in general. It was still possible to know if someone lived in the city or in the countryside. The style, in appearance, was often on the urban side . At least that's what I thought then, when I was 13 years old.
The closest big city for me was Laval, a good twenty kilometers away. Laval is not a very big city, but on the scale of a kid who didn't know the city, it was the equivalent of the capital. We could get there by bus. Otherwise, you had to find a parent who was sufficiently motivated and available to take you there. That is to say, it was not so easy for me to go to the cinema.
The first film was neither an Orson Welles nor a Jean-Luc Godard. It was a James Cameron film that has aged quite well: “ Terminator 2 ”. This is the first time I heard about here .
Years later, I bought a second-hand Perfecto to try. I have since reluctantly parted ways with it, but this type of jacket has always remained in the back of my mind, if only because some of my favorite musicians also wore it:
Maybe I'll come back to that later. In the meantime, my first notable piece of clothing in the cinema was a Perfecto-type jacket and if I had seen it on television or via a video cassette, it probably wouldn't have had the same effect on me.
The thing about the big screen is its immersive and spectacular side. It's even more true when you're very young and it's action cinema: you literally get your eyes and ears full of it. So it had a strong impact on me. This magic has never really left me: to appreciate the accuracy or charm of an outfit in a film, there is nothing better than the big screen .
2. RESEARCH AND MATERIALS
The second reason that makes me prefer clothing to cinema is apparently less emotional and spectacular. As you know, at BonneGueule we are very interested in textile materials. This is also one of the primary characteristics of our clothing collections and Benoit himself likes to define things like this: “For me, BonneGueule is above all texture, fabrics, materials. ".
But it is also sometimes significant moments in cinema that resurface, as evidenced by the link between James Bond films and our brown Breno suit. Benoit tells this story in this article:
Talking about style, fashion and clothing in cinema also means being interested in the materials and fabrics that dress the characters . But in many cases, this research is akin to the work of a detective. It's sometimes laborious but always exciting.
For the oldest and most famous Hollywood films, I sometimes look at wardrobe tests - these are fittings for film costumes and you can easily find some examples on sites like Pinterest. Beyond the vintage charm of these images, it is sometimes rich in lessons because we can easily visualize a complete outfit. It looks like this:
Generally speaking, to obtain some information on cinema outfits, you have to search tirelessly , consult archives, read from right to left, go back and check more or less reliable leads, etc. I also regularly opt for the simplest and most complicated solution at the same time: trying to contact the people who worked on the costumes for a film. But as you might expect, this doesn't always produce results.
It is therefore sometimes complicated to know more and in particular to know the composition of a piece of clothing in the cinema . The most telling example is perhaps the subject I devoted to the tweed coat. For the experiment, I sought the expert eye of my colleagues David and Julien based on a series of photographs. This little internal game was called tweed or not tweed? :
The least we can say is that even for an expert, precisely defining the material of a piece of clothing in cinema is sometimes like a riddle to solve . If you watch films at home, with a medium-sized screen, you will tell me that there is always the possibility of observing more carefully, by stopping the images for example. Except that it is not always convincing.
In the cinema, on the other hand, the size of the screen is gigantic. It's a visual experience in itself. It's also the surest way, in my opinion, to appreciate all the little details that you don't necessarily notice from your living room screen : a particular texture, a drape, nuances of color. Everything is magnified in cinema, and especially bigger. For a curious clothing lover, this is very far from being anecdotal.
3. THE END CREDITS AND ITS USEFUL INFORMATION
My third point follows the same logic as the previous one. It's a classic movie: most people leave the theater as soon as the end credits roll. Those who remain include people like me, who like to end a cinema experience with catchy music or simply collect references or interesting information about the film crew . Some even have little subtleties, like Harry Potter for example:
You can of course read this information from your living room when watching a film. But depending on the size of your screen, it's sometimes tiny and/or unreadable. Additionally, if you watch movies on some major TV channels, you may have noticed that they have now gotten into the annoying habit of cutting out this part, to save time.
Hence the interest in cinemas: films are shown in their entirety. The lights gradually come back on at the end. I can listen, read and even take notes when there is important information - clothing brand names mentioned for example . This information is precious and I like to take the time to discover it because we sometimes make fascinating discoveries. A concrete example ? The list of Korean fashion brands found in the credits of the film “Parasite”:
4. A RECENT EXAMPLE: “CRIMES OF THE FUTURE” BY DAVID CRONENBERG
Obviously, there are plenty of good reasons not to go to the cinema: the price, accessibility, people talking, eating or turning on their phones or simply being lazy. But there are plenty of other good reasons to go: the collective experience, the image, the sound, the immersion, etc. I too am faced with these different dilemmas and I certainly go there less than I would like. Still, the experience is unique, and I appreciate both the images and the clothes better .
The last film I went to see was “ Crimes of the Future ” by David Cronenberg. It's not necessarily his best, but he's one of those few authors that I like to follow out of loyalty. Although clothing does not occupy a central place in his work, his reflection on the body has always interested me.
His latest film has a very attractive casting on paper and very interesting outfits to observe. Randomly , the half-Jedi, half-Ninja techwear style of Viggo Mortensen, the very stylized outfits of Kristen Stewart or the more simple and relaxed ones of Léa Seydoux - among the latter, some could why not find their way into an Officine Générale lookbook. The film's costumes are by Mayou Trikerioti and watching them in a cinema gives them a particular strength.
I might see this film again later, on television or via a cinema platform. But it's likely that the clothes in the film won't have quite the same flavor.
What if I risked drawing a parallel with measurement and ready-to-wear? In one of our Déclic interviews, Romain Biette from Ardentes Clipei explained about measurement: “experience is what makes the difference” :
Just like the measurement, the experience of the film in the cinema also makes the difference. It is a bubble sheltered from multiple external requests - the Internet and its myriad of notifications, to name just a few. In fact, I am always fully focused on what I am watching when I go to the cinema .
If you sometimes suffer from attention problems, if everything seems too long, if you are regularly tempted to press pause or take a look at your cell phone, cinema is, in my opinion, one of the best refuges from the modern world . My tip for not getting sucked into the rush of time? I keep this eloquent tweet in the back of my mind:
It works generally with everything, and especially with cinematographic works lasting three or four hours. This phenomenon, which ironically affects Captain Haddock here, is precisely what I do not want to experience with books, films and everything in them. After all, loving clothing for me also means taking the time to understand and observe .
If I watch films today in theaters AND at home, my preferences will ultimately always be for the big screen, for all the reasons mentioned above. If cinema grows from this, there is a good chance that clothing will also find its benefit .
