Film Fashion Frenzy

THE FACULTY

When aliens invade a small-town high school, the students don't want to mess with expensive, high-maintenance couture from the likes of Armani or Versace to fight the fast-thinking murder-minded buggers created by Scream scribe Kevin Williamson. So in this nevertheless fashion-conscious sci-fi thriller, the high schoolers wear Tommy Hilfiger sweatshirts, T-shirts and jeans. Moreover, thanks to a multimillion dollar deal between Dimension Films and Hilfiger, Hilfiger is the brand on the teachers and parents, too. Such cuties as Elijah Wood and Josh Hartnett will no doubt do Tommy Hilfiger proud, but the cast member we most want to see in Hilfiger's all-American duds is gorgeous south-of-the-border gal Salma Hayek.

MUMFORD

If you were a woman suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome (Hope Davis) and you fell for your adorable psychiatrist (Loren Dean), what would you wear to entice him? Well, the costume designers for this film have decided the answer is BCBG Max Azria and lots of BCBG Max Azria. And in case the BCBG message doesn't get through to you that way, there's a scene in which a woman stops to look at a BCBG ad while thumbing through a magazine.

THE ADVENTURES OF SANDEE THE SUPERMODEL

Gee, wonder if this movie about Sandee, a five-foot-nine platinum blonde wannabe ubermodel who gets discovered in a New York City coffee shop by a dapper fashion designer, will have any fashion high points in it? To give you a hint, it's based on the comic book series created by Isaac Mizrahi and Mizrahi will probably star as the dapper designer. And, of course, Sandee's closet will be stuffed with Isaac Mizrahi creations.

HAPPY, TEXAS

When a movie begins with two jailbirds (Jeremy Northam and Steve Zahn) escaping from a Texas chain gang, it's hard to think there's going to be high fashion involved in the tale--stripes were probably as good as it was going to get and now even they're gone. But no, these escapees stumble upon a Winnebago that just happens to contain Canali suits for them to change into. Little do they know, the vehicle belongs to two gay beauty contestant coaches who are on their way to Happy, Texas, to ready a posse of prima donnas for the annual Little Miss Fresh Squeezed Beauty Pageant. The Canalis begin to figure importantly in the plot when the local sheriff (William H. Macy, in standard sheriff attire) pulls over the criminals, and knowing a well-cut suit when he sees one, takes these guys for the pageant coaches. The same ruse gets brought off every day in Hollywood.

YOUR FRIENDS & NEIGHBORS

If you're going to sit around and carp for hours about how screwed up your friends and neighbors are, as the characters do in this film from Neil LaBute (_In the Company of Men_), you'd better be well dressed at least. How fortunate, then, that although this exercise in comic mean-spiritedness was done on a low budget, the producers managed to get designer Calvin Klein to dress all of the stars--Nastassja Kinski, Ben Stiller, Jason Patric, Catherine Keener, Amy Brenneman and Aaron Eckhart.

EYE OF THE BEHOLDER

As this film's mystery woman, Ashley Judd is dressed to kill in Valentino--everything she has on is from the designer, including vintage numbers hauled out of their vaults for this production. When private dick Ewan McGregor secretly follows her, he wears Tommy Hilfiger so as not to stand out from every other American. (Not Hilfiger's baggy jeans, of course, but khaki slacks and white button-down shirts.) Jason Priestley also wears Hilfiger, so as not to stand out from every other American. He goes for the designer's caramel-colored suede pants because he's cool--and bad.

VERY BAD THINGS

With all the blacker-than-black comic mayhem unleashed by writer/director Peter Berg in this bizarro gem, it's unlikely anybody's going to be checking out fashion. The film's five main characters, bachelor party pals who get into deeper and deeper trouble once one of them accidentally kills a stripper, aren't flashy dudes to begin with. Fresh from doing some very naughty things himself, Christian Slater dons Dockers pants and Lacoste shirts to play the moral nadir of the group, and that's about as far as the guy fashion goes. But, as a hilariously determined, mood-swinging bride-to-be, Cameron Diaz dons Donna Karan and Calvin Klein outfits that should light up the screen if you haven't covered your eyes by then.

MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE

In this romantic tearjerker, a lonely reporter (Robin Wright Penn) tracks down the man who put a love letter in a bottle that washed up on a beach where she was vacationing. The man turns out to be shipbuilder Kevin Costner, who apparently will be one of the best-dressed shipbuilders in cinema history. Why? Because in real life, Costner's such a clotheshorse that he insisted on picking out some of his favorite labels for his character in this film--Burberry's, Fay, J.P. Tod's and sunglasses by Web.

TOWN & COUNTRY

Andie MacDowell is such a fan of J.P. Tod's that she got almost the entire adult cast of this film--Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn and Garry Shandling--to wear Tod's wares as they go through a collective midlife crisis in some of the tonier neighborhoods and vacation spots in America.

NOTTING HILL

When the world's most famous movie star (Julia Roberts) stumbles into a London bookstore owned by a charmingly stuttering Brit (Hugh Grant), she catches his eye because she looks movie-star dazzling. But she didn't get that way with the help of Calvin, Giorgio or Donna. To more convincingly portray a famous movie star, Roberts used clothing from her own closets, which means we'll no doubt see pieces from her favorite designers Todd Oldham and Richard Tyler.

GO

Swingers director Doug Liman has put together a collection of quirky characters--a supermarket checkout girl, a few soap-opera stars and a British party boy--who ail manage to get knee-deep into trouble while trying to obtain drugs on Christmas Eve. The cuties include Dawson's Creek star Katie Holmes in BCBG Max Azria's rose print dresses and pink skirts, and _The Sweet Hereafte_r's Sarah Polley in BCBG's black camisoles.

ENTROPY

When you give your movie a title like Entropy (dictionary meaning: "the degree of disorder or uncertainty in a system"), you'd be wise to put some attractive costumes on-screen to liven up the proceedings. Director Phil Joanou has made his share of tactical errors over the years (_Final Analysis, Heaven's Prisoners_), but here he has astutely coutured Lauren Holly in expensive suits by Giorgio Armani. We can, of course, expect Stephen Dorff to wear whatever Joanou himself wore to make U2: Rattle and Hum, his documentary about U2, since Dorff is playing a director who's making a documentary about U2.

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Heidi Parker is a senior editor at Movieline.

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