When I think back on my experiences watching the films of David Lynch, what I recall is—for lack of a better word—a mood. Actually, a few different moods: The eerie mundanity of Twin Peaks, the ravishing neo-noir of Blue Velvet, the twisted romance of Mulholland Drive, the uproarious spectacle of Wild at Heart. While all felt distinctly Lynch, it’s hard to pinpoint what, exactly, made them that way—their distinctive blend of humor and pathos? Of warmth and absurdity? The fine line between the mundane and the transcendent? It’s what makes the word “Lynchian” so useful yet so difficult to define, capturing as it does the singular vision of one of our most unique artists—and as critic David Ehrlich noted, what greater artistic legacy could one hope to leave than that?
In order to conjure up the myriad worlds of his imagination—often just like our own, but not quite—Lynch often relied on one of the most evocative (and undersung) tools in a director’s arsenal: the art of costume. Who can forget the sparkling black halterneck dress worn by Isabella Rossellini’s femme fatale lounge singer in Blue Velvet, or the prim cardigans worn by Naomi Watts in Muholland Drive as Betty, a wide-eyed, small-town girl arriving in Los Angeles for the first time? The subversive sweetness of Audrey Horne’s sweaters and schoolgirl plaid skirts in Twin Peaks, or the navy suits and beige overcoats worn in ever-so-slightly wrong proportions by Kyle Maclachlan’s Agent Cooper. Lynch was fascinated by the coded meanings of uniforms, but always presented them a little askew: The sartorial equivalent of the uncanny valley, it reflected his fascination with that which is perfect and pristine to the outside world, yet conceals a darker, more menacing core. He was a master of using style to create, well, substance.
It’s little wonder, then, that Lynch has served as a north star for fashion designers from all around the world. There are the more literal references, of course. Raf Simons, who soundtracked his fall 2008 show for Jil Sander with Angelo Badalamenti’s famous Twin Peaks score, even included stills of Laura Dern in Blue Velvet as patches on sweaters and leopard print coats—with Dern herself sitting on the front row. Rei Kawakubo’s spring 2016 collection for Comme des Garçons—which paid tribute to “powerful women who are misunderstood, but do good in the world,” a Lynchian archetype if ever there was one—saw reams of blue velvet manipulated into grotesque proportions with a warped kind of elegance. (The show featured Roy Orbison’s “Blue Velvet” booming from the speakers, of course.)
But you can also detect Lynch’s presence woven through the work of some of the most influential designers of the last few decades, from Simons’s Calvin Klein collections exploring the dark underbelly of American visual culture to the hodgepodge glamour of Alessandro Michele’s designs for Gucci, where the designer even paid tribute to Twin Peaks’ infamous Red Room with the set for his fall 2016 menswear show. Meanwhile, Demna’s knack for destabilizing utilitarian wardrobe staples has a clear antecedent in Lynch’s costumes—the designer even told Vogue’s Luke Leitch in 2017, after MacLachlan attended his memorable “dadcore” Balenciaga show in Paris’s Bois de Boulogne, that Agent Cooper was a mainstay on his moodboards.
