Practically a yr earlier than the buzzy film debuted, paparazzi pictures of the costumed stars started leaking from the placement shoot. When the premiere rolled round, it was simply the primary in a months-long collection of red-carpet occasions, for which the forged—and followers—wore garments impressed by the movie. The film went on to change into a worldwide hit and an Oscar favourite whose recognition modified the course of up to date trend.
No, I’m not speaking about Barbie, whose hyperfeminine, hot-pink aesthetic was so ubiquitous final yr that it sparked a brand new Dictionary.com entry. Again in 1967, the crime drama Bonnie and Clyde redefined film advertising and screen-to-street dressing—and have become a pop-culture phenomenon. Primarily based on the real-life exploits of the titular outlaws, the movie entranced the youthful era with its polarizing story, which some critics noticed as glorifying violence. However the film additionally impressed relentless hype through a grassroots advertising marketing campaign as intelligent and audacious because the movie itself. As we speak, we’d name it #Bonniecore.
Barbie could have raised contractually obligated promotional appearances to the extent of efficiency artwork, however Hollywood has an extended historical past of blurring the strains between display screen and streetwear. Earlier than stylists, sponsored content material, and model ambassadors dominated the pink carpet, many main women turned to studio costume designers to make their opening-night robes. In truth, most studios stage-managed their contract gamers’ public photographs, dressing them on-screen and off.
Bonnie and Clyde could have been the primary Hollywood movie to capitalize on the ability of trend as a advertising device in a global PR push. It was a technique born of desperation: Warner Bros. had just about disowned the ultraviolent biopic after scathing early evaluations, and it allotted no price range for publicity, a lot much less a full-blown Oscar marketing campaign. However Warren Beatty—the movie’s producer in addition to its main man—had deferred a part of his wage to get the movie made, and he was decided to plug it, even when that meant carrying a fedora and a pinstriped go well with on the pink carpet.
Luckily, Bonnie and Clyde’s costumes attracted the type of press that no studio might purchase. “Two of probably the most trendy individuals alive at present aren’t,” The Atlanta Journal joked. “They died amid blood and bullets 34 years in the past in Louisiana.” The rookie costume designer Theadora Van Runkle, a former trend illustrator, dressed Faye Dunaway’s Bonnie in berets, calf-length skirts, and braless sweaters that have been evocative of the movie’s Mud Bowl setting, but have been like catnip to 1967 audiences. “Bonnie and Clyde slept in vehicles and crummy auto courts,” Van Runkle advised the Los Angeles Occasions. “Their garments needed to be livable. That’s why they’ve been so profitable now.”
The pure colours and textures of the ’30s have been an irresistible various to the microskirt and artificial materials in psychedelic hues then in fashion. Simply as “mod” was starting to look old school, nostalgia had change into stylish, and Bonnie and Clyde helped usher within the neo-Victorian hippie stylish of the Seventies. Younger audiences related with the movie’s rebellious antiheroes and imitated their model of gritty glamor. After a shaky begin, Bonnie and Clyde stayed in theaters for months, turning into some of the worthwhile movies of the last decade.
Dunaway leaned into the Melancholy-era dressing, striding “by way of the style pages within the all of a sudden well-liked ’30s-style attire and fits like those she wore within the movie,” Time famous. She even borrowed a beret from the wardrobe division to advertise the movie in New York, pairing it with a beige and brown plaid go well with by the designer Jacques Tiffeau. A digital unknown when she acquired the function, Dunaway was catapulted to the A-list—and the Worldwide Finest-Dressed Checklist.
The movie opened the Montreal Movie Competition in August 1967, the place Dunaway seemed “splendidly smooth and distant,” in accordance to the Ottawa Citizen. A month later, the forged (minus Dunaway, who was already taking pictures her subsequent movie) assembled for a premiere in Denton, Texas—the place the actual Bonnie and Clyde dedicated crimes and the place components of the film have been filmed. In November, Dunaway made a solo go to to London, the place she “took town as few of her countrywomen—besides perhaps Jackie Kennedy and Pocahontas—had earlier than,” Life reported. Although there was no London opening for Bonnie and Clyde, Dunaway attended the glitzy premiere of Camelot, the place she was photographed in a Bonnie-esque ensemble of a calf-length brown-satin coat edged in ostrich feathers; she advised a reporter she’d designed it herself.
In January 1968, Dunaway appeared on the quilt of Life in an extended cardigan go well with and beret, below the headline “Bonnie: Trend’s New Darling.” Days later, she flew to Paris for the European premiere of Bonnie and Clyde on the Moulin Rouge. The movie’s trend popularity preceded it; followers with non permanent machine-gun tattoos mobbed the pink carpet. “My Clyde hat was snatched off my head,” Beatty advised a newspaper, although his dapper go well with learn as gangsterish even with out the fedora. Dunaway wore a shiny white beret with an identical lengthy, fringed coat and V-neck minidress; if the impact was extra Twenties than Nineteen Thirties, no person seen. A grateful French hatmaker had a field of berets delivered to her room on the George V—gross sales had skyrocketed for the reason that movie’s launch.
In April 1968, Bonnie and Clyde gained two Oscars out of 10 nominations. Dunaway, nominated for Finest Actress, wore a slinky Nineteen Thirties-style black satin wrap robe to the ceremony, its deep V-neck edged with ruched chiffon, a classic purse dangling from her arm. Van Runkle, who was additionally nominated, made the robe; she claimed that it was impressed by a Botticelli portray, nevertheless it was pure Bonnie.
“In all probability nobody imagined on the time that probably the most far-reaching contribution Bonnie and Clyde would go away to our acid-rock-pop era was its affect on trend,” Present journal mirrored in 1970. Whereas the designer Geoffrey Beene interpreted Clyde’s pinstriped fits and fedoras for ladies (dubbed the “Alice Capone” look), others supplied cardigans, “Bonnie berets,” and the Nineteen Thirties-inspired “midi” hemline. The film revived the flagging menswear business, popularizing fits in dandyish glen plaids and pinstripes, and giving a lift to Ralph Lauren, who launched his first tie assortment in 1967. Walt Frazier, the purpose guard drafted to the New York Knicks in 1967, acquired his nickname, “Clyde,” due to his penchant for fedoras. Beatty appeared on the February 1968 cowl of Harper’s Bazaar, accompanied by a mannequin in a beret. Bonnie and Clyde mannequins posed in stylish New York store home windows, weapons drawn.
The avant-garde designer Rudi Gernreich was one of many few who didn’t hop on the Bonnie and Clyde bandwagon. “I believe it’s surprising to need to appear to be a few hideous murderers,” he complained to a journalist. “Trend isn’t tragedy; it’s leisure. It ought to be tongue-in-cheek, reduction from severe issues. That is one thing else.” The couturier Pierre Cardin shared his skepticism, albeit for a distinct motive, saying, “It isn’t the function of the couture to advertise movies.”
The well-known designers who’ve been dressing Margot Robbie in meticulous reproductions of Barbie garments would absolutely beg to vary. Like Bonnie and Clyde, Barbie faucets into escapist nostalgia; one of many pleasures of the film, in addition to the publicity tour, was recognizing deep cuts from the doll’s 65-year trend historical past. (As America Ferrera’s character within the movie gasps, watching Ken toss Barbie’s garments out of a window, “These are archival!”) The Bonnie look was lived-in, earthy, sexual—every part the space-age fashion of the Nineteen Sixties was not. However Barbie’s costuming—for all its cheerful colours, humor, and childhood recollections—is rebellious in its personal means, pushing again in opposition to the dressed-down COVID period, when heels acquired the heave-ho and sweatpants grew to become the brand new black. Within the spirit of the movie, it pushes again in opposition to the patriarchy too, asserting that you could be a trend icon and a feminist icon on the similar time—a message as provocative at present as Bonnie and Clyde’s unrepentant carnage was then.
