We Know What You Wore This Summer

You're unlikely to spot a Versace or a Valentino in Disturbing Behavior, Halloween: H20, Urban Legend, or I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. That's because Jared Leto, Alicia Witt, Katie Holmes, Jennifer Love Hewitt and the other stars of these youth-market slasher films wear the same labels everyone in their audience likes to wear.

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No question about it: big fashion designers have muscled their way back into Hollywood with big-buck success. Through a combination of diplomacy, wheedling, seduction and tolerance for movie-star greed, fickleness and vanity, couture houses have taken over the Oscars and turned more than a few major movies into minor runway shows. But truth be told, film costume design these days is influenced far more by the mall than by Milan. Aside from the occasional retro kick one gets from watching Gwyneth Paltrow haute couture'd to the gills in Great Expectations or A Perfect Murder, or the full-on joy of a rare occurrence like the Prada-meets-Nike look of William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet, there's been a seismic shift from the old moviegoing days when women went to high-style Hollywood films to learn how to dress up. All that swank was sublime, but no one in the real world could possibly afford to wrap themselves in Givenchy. Even the knockoffs were often prohibitive. Today there are plenty of high-end numbers gorgeously scattered through Hollywood product, but the biggest fashion story is elsewhere.

In the edgier, logo-conscious era of the late '90s, the fashion dynamic between what's on-screen and what's on the bodies of the moviegoers is ultra-symbiotic--and movies targeted at youth audiences are the best proof of it. The current spate of slasher movies shows how it works: a savvy costume designer observes the style codes of teens and twentysomethings, astutely works them into the film's look and, with Tinseltown alchemy, creates a potent new fashion statement that is buyably sub-couture.

We can pretty much thank the modestly budgeted blockbuster shocker Scream for this revved-up cycle of symbiotic fashion influence. Scream itself wasn't styled for particular impact, but it was so successful it set up the opportunity for Scream 2 to be a fashion bonanza. The sequel was shot and showing in theaters within six months, making it possible for costume designer Kathleen Detoro to create a look that throbbed with accessible nowness.

"The producers and the director wanted to make Scream 2 more fashiony than the first movie," says Detoro. "And anyone who actually wanted to go out and find this stuff could find it in stores.

"We all read fashion magazines and W to see what's supposed to be the hot trend," continues Detoro. "But you've got to be in the malls--the great playground of high school and college kids. I live in Santa Monica and can go into some of the funkier shops on the Third Street Promenade like NaNa, then go right to the Gap. I look everywhere, I shop everywhere--the Venice boardwalk included. Being in this world, you see that one little interesting thing on someone, a kind of boot, say, or the way they tie their shoelaces or don't tie their shoelaces or have no shoelaces at all."

Neve Campbell, who'd become a star off the success of the first Scream, was the centerpiece of Detoro's style strategy for Scream 2. "The filmmakers wanted sleeker silhouettes and darker coloration, because of the ordeals the characters had been through. Neve had really worked out since the first movie. Her body was more streamlined and stronger. We put her in some ready-to-wear D&G instead of Dolce & Gabbana's couture line, and in pants from Laundry by Shelli Segal and also from Vertigo--classic, boot-cut pants that stayed away from bell-bottom stuff. Lucky Brand makes very cool, hip jeans in lots of styles to fit everyone, but Neve has very long legs, so we had Lucky make jeans for her." Ask anyone who loved Scream 2 what article of clothing they remember, and they'll answer: Neve Campbell's blue suede jacket. Detoro laughs at the mention of it. "From that jacket alone, I got so many calls--from journalists, producers, everybody. There wasn't time to design a jacket and have it made, and we wanted a vintage look, but we couldn't really choose vintage because we needed multiples, so it was D&G. Her other leather jacket, the brown one, was DKNY."

Once Scream 2 proved that young audiences want their shockers fashion-smart as well as scary, other thrillers followed suit. For this summer's Disturbing Behavior, in which straight-arrow teens of a Pacific Northwest town turn out to be not as natural as apple pie, costume designer Trish Keating zeroed in on real-world high school cliques for inspiration. "If you want to set a style trend in a movie, you take a risk it'll get rejected and make the whole movie look 'off.' A big consideration for every article of clothing in this movie was, Will it be accepted in this genre? Hanging out at malls and schools around Seattle, Portland and Vancouver while preparing the movie told me that kids everywhere see the same styles and trends, and all want to emulate what they see on TV and in movies. The availability of pretty much everything we use in the movie ensures that they can do that."

Keating first mastered the codes of high school cliques. "I took roll after roll of pictures, because the whole theme of Disturbing Behavior hinges on the fact that high schools have different social groups. Young people at this age have an incredible need to belong. Even if they are rebels, they want to belong to a group of rebels. Every school has its goths in black, wearing crosses and all sorts of silver jewelry; motorheads who are into their cars and bikes; microgeeks into computer stuff and chess; the really popular skateboarder types; the heavy metal types; and a whole group of earthy, planet-oriented kids, the eco freaks." The look of the clique that Disturbing Behavior features most prominently--sinister straight kids--got invented solely for laughs and scares. "This group is very Ivy League," explains Keating, "and for them we shopped the Gap and Club Monaco."

The two biggest stars of Disturbing Behavior, Katie Holmes of Dawson's Creek and James Marsden of Second Noah, got special treatment. "They had to have allure and sex appeal," says Keating. "We had to create the leather jacket Katie wears, because we needed a double, but the jeans are Gap, the tank tops are Calvin Klein, and lots of the other stuff is just pop brands I don't remember. James wears a custom-made leather jacket that we created together, but it resembles J. Crew's leather straight-cut jacket. We also ordered him henley tops and pants from the J. Crew catalogue, and we put him in a lot of Calvin Klein T-shirts he liked the fit of. His jeans are mostly Diesel."

The late-summer Halloween: H2O is another mall-made movie, even though costume designer Deborah Everton claims, "I hate to shop and I avoid malls." This reinvention of the Halloween movie franchise is set in a boarding school where a group of students are terrorized while their classmates are off on a camping trip. "What made H2O especially fun," says Everton, "was that the kids wear uniforms. Having gone to boarding school myself, I know that you do all you can to turn that uniform into a personal expression. I had some of the girls wear pants as part of the uniform instead of a skirt, and I varied the skirt lengths for the others. We also used stockings, socks, Hush Puppies--anything to give each of the student characters some personal expression. I even put jewelry by Sonya Ooten on some of the girls. The biggest mistake I've seen on movies featuring young characters is treating teenagers as if they're of one mind."

Not all of H2O is in uniform. "For the scenes out of uniform, I used mostly American Eagle Outfitters for the guys, a fantastic line of very basic, very stylish, really nicely cut, cool stuff. Both Josh Hartnett [of TV's Cracker] and Adam Hann-Byrd [of The Ice Storm] wore pretty much American Eagle Outfitters right to the toes of their boots. We tried as much as we could to stay away from oversized jeans, because that look just dates so. For Michelle Williams [another Dawson's Creek doll], I chose a pair of cotton Lycra Only Hearts pants, an American Eagle Outfitters top, a nice hooded sweater by BCBG Max Azria and a BCBG pullover. I wanted her to wear a pair of Betsey Johnson tie-dyed velvet hip huggers, but she didn't feel comfortable in the tie-dye look or the color, so I switched it for a more hip-hop, black outfit. For Jodi Lyn O'Keefe [of TV's Nash Bridges] I chose a red floral Vivienne Tam top, a great, almost Olive Oyl kind of dress from She by Sheri Bodell, and some terrific Doc Martens."

One of the cool things about H2O is that, in addition to its choice cast of teens, it stars Jamie Lee Curtis as a grownup Laurie Strode, heroine of the first two Halloween outings. "The clothes that bring Laurie Strode to the '90s are conservative," says Everton. "They're classic almost in a Hitchcock sort of way--a charcoal Donna Karan sweater, Guess? jeans. Laurie is head of the boarding school, and I basically shopped Nordstrom for her Calvin Klein blazer and Nickels shoes. I'd say her look in this is not Sears, not Barneys, that she's womanly, not a siren." H2O also features Curtis's mom, Janet Leigh, whose impeccable credentials as a heroine-in-jeopardy include that memorable role in the classic that's now being remade, Psycho. No mall melange for her--she sports "a custom-made Oscar de la Renta leather purse that cost a fortune and was based on the black purse that her character stuffed the stolen money into in Hitchcock's Psycho."

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