How "Blade Runner" shaped the fashion landscape

There is a before and after Blade Runner. Ridley Scott’s film, loosely inspired by Philip Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, established a science fiction imaginary that was never the same again, defining the genre’s future in 1982 and influencing thinkers, creators, and artists to come, leaving them with no escape from what the filmmaker had created. Because Blade Runner didn’t just set the visual tone that sci-fi would adopt from then on—it shaped entire industries. Like fashion, which was contaminated by Scott’s avant-garde vision to the point of influencing trends that would continue to repeat over time. What immediately stands out in Blade Runner are the environments in which the story is set: looming neon and advertisements, skyscrapers, and street-level smoke that underscore the high-tech soul, which crushes the humanity of its characters, androids included. But the protagonists' clothing also expressed their emotional states and served as inspiration for the fashion industry ever since. The noir cinema references a long-coated detective, played by the timeless Harrison Ford channeling a modern Humphrey Bogart, and an inscrutable femme fatale like Sean Young gave the film a mysterious yet precise and gritty tone, with outfits that revealed not only the characters' status but also their role in the broader story arc. Now that Blade Runner is back in theatres, the perfect opportunity arises to recognise how the aesthetics of the film have influenced fashion collections.      

Givenchy Haute Couture Fall 2018 by Lee McQueen

Givenchy Haute Couture Fall 2018 by Lee McQueen

Givenchy Haute Couture Fall 2018 by Lee McQueen

Givenchy Haute Couture Fall 2018 by Lee McQueen

Givenchy Haute Couture Fall 2018 by Lee McQueen

Givenchy Haute Couture Fall 2018 by Lee McQueen

It’s no coincidence that Rachel’s outfits, portrayed by Young, were inspired by the creations of Adrian, the greatest costume designer cinema of the 1930s (and beyond) had ever seen. An artist primarily focused on “dressing” the minds of female leads so they could truly feel the role they were playing—regardless of genre or era. For Rachel, the keeper of the secret and the interpretive key to Blade Runner, this meant building an armor with which to face the world. Thus, padded shoulders, a cinched waist, and a pencil skirt would place her on the battlefield protected and assured—drawn from the late 1930s to early 1940s suits, the same “power suits” rediscovered and reinterpreted by women in the ’70s and ’80s thanks to Ridley Scott’s film. A reinvented vintage that still remained faithful to the past (fitting, since the film is not just a noir, but a neo-noir)—from Rachel’s futuristic hairstyle to the oversized fur coat worn under the endless rain of 2019 Los Angeles. And in the end, didn’t we all rediscover and elevate vintage during those same years? A character whose structured suits fascinated everyone from Armani to Balmain, clashing with the overt punk references that also influenced the characters’ looks—like Pris’s black makeup, played by Daryl Hannah, and her “raccoon eyes.”

Blade Runner was destined from the beginning to become one of the main sources of inspiration for artists and designers who wanted to infuse their creations with a mix of cyberpunk and neo-noir. From McQueen’s Givenchy Couture Fall 1998 collection to Gareth Pugh’s Fall 2016 ready-to-wear line—both drawing on Rachel as a reference—there is also the heavy presence in the film of leatherette and latex fabrics, used to convey a sense of futuristic female power. The agile bodies and design of the Nexus-6 replicants captivated Yves Saint Laurent and Jean Paul Gaultier, intrigued by Pris’s chaotic look, as well as Valentino’s transparent trench coats and Fendi’s FW18 collection. For men, Rick Owens and Martin Margiela were fascinated by the techno-plasticized jackets worn by Roy Batty, played by the iconic Rutger Hauer, while Raf Simons paid tribute to Blade Runner in his SS 2018 menswear collection, which also nodded to the 2049 sequel. The runway was lit by neon lights illuminating models wrapped in long coats and accessorized with transparent umbrellas. The use of transparent plastic is already seen in Prada’s Fall 2002 collection, inspired by the raincoat worn by the replicant Zhora as she escapes from Deckard.

In 2017, Blade Runner 2049 marked a turning point in the sci-fi world Ridley Scott had established. The costumes by Renée April for Denis Villeneuve’s film were no longer made to fascinate the viewer, but to express the characters’ need for survival. Unsurprisingly, both the costume designer and production designer Dennis Gassner described the world imagined by the Canadian director as brutal. A paradigm shift that intensified the “punk” in the film’s “cyber” world—one that could not forget its origins—emphasizing certain aspects (Agent K’s worn coat, played by Ryan Gosling, or the nonsense of Mackenzie Davis’s character’s clothing) while always remaining conscious of its roots.