Twin Peaks fashion: Why David Lynch's TV show is back in style

Audrey Horne

Twin Peaks, David Lynch’s iconic TV series, is returning to our screens after it went missing for almost three decades. First broadcast in 1990, the show became a cult classic and is celebrated by fans and TV scholars alike. One of the reasons for this is its extraordinary use of costume. The original series’ strikingly distinctive style anticipated the way we dress now, making its revival especially timely.

The show’s original costume designer was Patricia Norris, who won an Emmy for her work on the pilot episode. Sara Markowitz took over for the series’ two-season run and adapted Norris’s ideas, taking them in directions.

Norris and Markowitz combined classic Americana (1950s style leather jackets, plaid workwear, cheerleader uniforms) with the often tonally jarring looks of the late 1980s (oversized patterned knits and scrunchies).

The look they created was simultaneously timeless, indicating the universality of American small-town life, and highly specific, conveying the distinctiveness of David Lynch’s vision. Twin Peaks’ style is both very recognisable and intensely strange, mapping on to coordinates of what we think we know, yet at the same time upsetting them.

Clues are everywhere

Part of the cult appeal of Twin Peaks is in the way it encourages its viewers to look for clues and to participate in the detective process, which gives rise to endless speculation. It is the original water-cooler television. Clothes are no exception to this process. Why does the character of Audrey Horne change from sensible black and white saddle shoes to red kitten heels when she gets to school? The obvious answer is out of adolescent rebellion. However, the repeated close-ups on the shoes throughout the pilot episode draw attention to them and encourage the viewer to speculate on their meaning.

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Why Twin Peaks is still on every fashion designer's mood board today

Audrey Horne

When Showtime and Sky Atlantic announced back in January 2016 that a new series of Twin Peaks was in production, fans of the original series rejoiced. Over 600,000 images from the Nineties original have now been shared and relived on Instagram, meaning that the cult following of the David Lynch-directed drama series is still very much alive in the social media age.

But what was so special about a TV show that was cancelled after just two seasons? It turns out that Twin Peaks mania was as much about the costumes, and the distinct visual world that Lynch and costume designers Patricia Norris and Sara Markowitz created, as about the plot - and the series has since gone down in the fashion history books thanks to its influence.

“Twin Peaks was a weird world and weird is cool,” says Christopher Laverty, the costume historian and editor of Clothes on Film. “If you look at television of the time we were ingesting endless variations on Jessica Fletcher and her patterned silk neck scarves in Murder She Wrote; TV needed to break some boundaries.”

Compared to anything else on the box in 1990, the activities in this surreal logging town and the inquest into the murder of homecoming queen Laura Palmer offered total escapism; a dreamland filled with oddball characters that were simultaneously abstract and relatable.

From the Log Lady and her kooky specs and ratty cardigans, to high school coquette Audrey Horne in her kilts and twinsets, the figures presented were cool because of their uniqueness.

Bay Garnett, contributing fashion editor at British Vogue says it’s no wonder that fashion designers still riff off of the costumes, when the entire industry is built on celebrating distinct characters and their personal looks

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