The 10 Most Stylish Recent Movies

In honor of our Avenue Rouge Runway fashion show this Thursday night at L’Auberge Casino, and NOLA Fashion Week coming soon, this special edition of The Movie Filter looks at great style found in the movies. While most lists like this will have all the usual suspects like Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Thomas Crown Affair, Breathless and The Devil Wears Prada, but like the best of fashion I wanted to keep 225‘s list more current. So here are the Ten Most Stylish Movies of the Last Five Years:

Set in 1965 on a misty New England island, Wes Anderson’s young adult novel come to life traces the runaway footsteps of a pair of tween adventurers. Quirky boy scouts, elaborate church play costumes, vivid colors and quirky New England brick-a-brack abound, but it is Bill Murray’s vintage Madras pants that threaten to steal the show.

Rob Marshall’s musical film based on the Fellini-inspired Broadway hit features a suave, shaded Daniel Day-Lewis matched against a string of provocative and powerful female dueling partners—Nicole Kidman, Marion Cotillard, Penelope Cruz and Kate Hudson—each as ravishing and stylish as the last.

Nicolas Winding Refn’s Bangkok-set fever dream is rich with religious symbolism but also style as evidenced by a series of sleek West Coast looks for star Ryan Gosling and plenty of Asian-influenced fashion for his would-be girlfriend, Yayaying Rhatha Phongam, and his horror of a mother, Kristin Scott Thomas.

Okay, this award-winning drama was directed by none other than acclaimed fashion designer Tom Ford. So then it is no surprise that every frame is studded with style, from Colin Firth’s impeccable 1960’s professorial cool to Julianne Moore’s Hepburn-worthy dresses and swirling up-dos.

A surreal trip through the many incarnations of music legend Bob Dylan, Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There rolls through several seasons of style, from the early folk suede and denim of Christian Bale’s Greenwich Village protester, to the country-cool motorcycle man of Heath Ledger’s post-fame flame out, to the Ray-Bans and Mod ’60s frizz of Cate Blanchett’s brilliantly electric turn as a rock star under fire.

Audrey Tautou embodies one of fashion’s most iconic names in this tale of the French orphan and seamstress who sings in a nightclub before making a splash as a high society milliner (hat maker) and begins her journey to worldwide acclaim.

It can be argued that every James Bond movie is a fashion frenzy, but the billion-earning Skyfall in particular did well to avoid the more obvious “product placement” flashes of clothes and accessories, with a craggy, but well-suited, Daniel Craig perfectly cozy in his lived-in designer threads as he squares off against a diabolical Javier Bardem. As always, the “Bond Girls,” Naomi Harris and Berenice Marlohe (pictured above), do more than hold their own in the looks department.

A lot of guys dream of looking like this in their suits, and director Christopher Nolan gives us two and a half hours of surreal suspense with Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Hardy and Ken Watanabe looking like they stepped off the runway while trying not to lose their minds. Plus, Marion Cotillard is a vision, figuratively and literally, in every scene she appears.

Woody Allen’s whispy, time-traveling nostalgia drama is a style tour-de-force through multiple eras, following Owen Wilson on his journey’s to the 1920s and beyond to mingle with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso and more luminaries. Marion Cotillard (yes, this is her third appearance on this list), is dreamy as a kewpie temptress lost in her love for the past.

The knock on this film is the same one Fitzgerald received initially with the novel: “all style, little substance.” Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation embraces the fashion of this tragic American success story, and the colorful Roaring Twenties have never looked more fashionable than on the backs of stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan.