The current state of fashion is backlit by the sunshiny side of the 1970s; in The Virgin Suicides, Sofia Coppola’s darkened impression is part hazy nostalgia, part dazzling lens flare. Adapted from Jeffrey Eugenides’ book, Coppola’s debut film transposes the novel’s distinctive first-person-plural prose and filters it through her signature dreamlike aesthetic: here, it washes over a leafy Midwestern suburb, as seen through the eyes of the teenagers who live there. As the title suggests, the film chronicles the short lives of the enigmatic but sheltered Lisbon sisters – Cecilia, Lux, Bonnie, Mary and Therese. They are, like any tale of unrequited teen crushes, watched from afar by a group of neighbourhood boys. Now grown up, the boys narrate the girls’ story in flashback form: when tragedy strikes, it is them who will try to put the pieces together. In one scene, they have managed to get their hands on a diary belonging to one of the Lisbons. Turning the pages, they – and we – can briefly enter the interiority of 1970s girlhood. “We felt the imprisonment of being a girl, the way it made your mind active and dreamy,” the voice-over explains. “And how you ended up knowing which colours went together.”
The Virgin Suicides aesthetic has influenced an entire generation of bored teenage girls with their heads in the clouds. Tavi Gevinson is a self-admitted devotee of its dream world, and ritualistically returns to the book and film every summer. Coppola worked with costume designer Nancy Steiner to achieve a genuinely thrifted 70s look that didn’t appear deliberately retro – you need only look at the film’s late 90scontemporary, Boogie Nights, for a very different take on that style. Coppola, admittedly “struck by the beauty of banal details”, populates her suburban universe with the quiet fashions of authentic 70s girlhood: delicate lace dresses, bandeau tops, tiered maxis in dusky florals. The influence on the fashion world since has been seen in the whimsical style of Rodarte, as well as Coppola collaborator Marc Jacobs (the Daisy campaigns, as directed by Coppola, are clearly part of the Lisbon sisters’ world).
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