Compiled by A24, How Directors Dress is less a book about fashion, more a book about style – specifically that of the Academy of Motion Pictures’s stalwarts. As Joanna Hogg writes in her introduction to the book: “How you dress informs everything. It is at the heart of not just who you are at work, but who you are in life. The things you do to be accepted. How you want to appear to other people. This is true for filmmakers, as it is true for all professions.” Take Sofia Coppola, who breezed around the 18th-century sets of Marie Antoinette in a crisp Charvet button-up and slacks, or Steven Spielberg, who wore a faded Canadian tuxedo throughout his Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom shoot. Equally intriguing: the wardrobes that directors have been forced to adopt while shooting in less temperate climes. See: Kathryn Bigelow’s keffiyeh-and-ski-goggle uniform on The Hurt Locker set in the Jordanian desert. If you’re charmed by journalist Charlie Porter’s introduction – and keen to sink your teeth into a proper fashion read – his own books, What Artists Wear and Bring No Clothes: Bloomsbury and the Philosophy of Fashion, are both great.
