Fashion in Dario Argento's movies

From Wednesday 6 April 2022 to Monday 16 January 2023 the Mole Antonelliana in Turin, home of the National Cinema Museum, will host Dario Argento - The Exhibit, the first exhibition, curated by Domenico De Gaetano and Marcello Garofalo, entirely dedicated to the undisputed Master of Thrills. Fans of the Roman director have the opportunity to completely immerse themselves in his visionary universe, made up of nightmares, dreams, saturated colors, bizarre and disquieting, retracing through a series of memorabilia his filmography from his debut in 1970 with The Bird with the Crystal Feathers to his latest work Black Glasses, recently presented at the Berlin Film Festival. The images of Suspiria, Phenomena, Inferno, Stendhal's Syndrome, The Third Mother and all the other cult movies flow before your eyes as you walk through the 44 props, 12 precious original posters and playbills, 10 costumes and over 60 panels that trace Argento's biographical and artistic journey. 

Among the quotations, photographs, sketches, posters and mechanized creatures in the cabinet de curiosité that reconstructs Argento's visionary narrative inside the Mole, a special place is held by the works of haute couture fashion houses and famous tailors who made costumes and jewelry for Dario Argento: from Tirelli to the Sorelle Ferroni, from Oscar winner Enrico Sabbatini to Giorgio Armani or Trussardi, for whom the director directed the Trussardi-Action fashion show in 1986 (complete with fake murder on stage). The seductive tension of his films comes not only from a skillful interplay of shots, photography, screenplay and set design, but also from the styling of the characters.  

Thus the costumes are one of the keys to entering a glamorous and creepy dimension: The white shirt and other preppy Armani outfits worn by Jennifer Connelly in Phenomena; Jessica Harper's woven white jumpers in Suspiria; the cocktail dresses and scarves worn by Catherine Spaak in her femme fatale version in The Nine Tails; the brown leather trench coat chosen by costume designer Elena Mannini for actress Clara Calamai, the killer in Deep Red; the snake-shaped Bulgari brooch in Inferno; the Ray-ban must-have of the protagonist in Black Glasses.

Daria Nicolodi's black see-through dress and Alida Valli's rigorous suit are just two of the many looks that Argento's muses have worn in his horror films and that have inspired designers over the years. The most recent and overt example is MSGM F/W 2020 menswear collection which featured a Suspiria-core mood, with saturated colours, prints reproducing cult scenes and the director's aesthetic obsessions. We can also find homages to Argento's work in the SS15 collection created by Nicolas Ghesquiere for Louis Vuitton, in Thomas Tait FW15 and in Rodarte's work.