Previous installments of our WORN Fashion Journal series can be found here . Most recently: Anna’s Parents Review Paris Fashion Week .

INT. TORONTO’S EYESORE CINEMA ON QUEEN WEST – NIGHT

A tall brunette (ANNA) and her significantly less tall blonde friend (HALEY) are in deep concentration, furiously browsing through the horror movie section. ANNA is already in her pajamas, eagerly anticipating the shenanigans of the night that will follow. Her pajamas are from the clearance section from some outlet store, but she is totally rocking them. Seriously. She should work in magazines.

Suddenly, there is an ominous creak as the door opens, which is weird because the door to Eyesore is usually just propped open. HALEY and ANNA both jerk their heads around, expressions of sheer terror upon their faces. A sinister looking man stands before them (HALEY’S BOYFRIEND). He holds a bag of peanut M&M’s. HALEY, ANNA, and HALEY’S BOYFRIEND exchange solemn nods, their mission clear. As the camera pans back, the following words flash upon the screen:

THE WORN FASHION JOURNAL STYLISH SCARY MOVIE MARATHON

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The Eyes of Laura Mars

Vertigo

Don’t Look Now

Disturbing Behavior

The Red Shoes

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The Eyes of Laura Mars
1978, Dir. Irvin Kirshner

Anna: Let’s start with a recap. Oh, and there will be spoilers. The movie stars Faye Dunaway as Laura Mars, a Helmut Newton-style photographer. Her shoots involve very provocative images of women in their underwear, skivvies if you will…

Haley: And also really glossy, violent images…

Anna: And then it comes out that her photos mimic recent crime scene photos and as she produces violent images copycat murders keep happening. Somehow Laura Mars is psychically linked to the murderer and can “see” the murders as they happen from the perspective of the killer. It turns out her boo, the police officer on the case, played by a really young Tommy Lee Jones or really old Josh Hartnett ( depending on which way you want to go ), is behind all the murders.

Haley: Yes. So stylistically this is an American – I don’t know how to pronounce the word properly…

Anna: Giallo?

Haley: Giallo film, yeah.

Anna: We’re transcribing this, so no one will ever know we don’t know how to pronounce it properly.

Haley: Yeah, I get to keep my ugly North American-ness to myself. One of the hallmarks of Giallo films is really stylish, really sexy deaths. And everyone is very beautiful and has great hair and the killers are always a twist , where the killer is a mild-mannered person you never expected, or sometimes even the hero of the film turns out to be the murder.

Anna: But this killer became super obvious once every single other suspect got murdered along the way, sooo….

Haley: Yeah, they were just knocking them off.

Anna: I remember when we were watching this, you started by saying you really didn’t know how it was lampooning the fashion industry, because it did show the angry feminists at the beginning protesting Laura’s art show. The irony is, of course, Tommy Lee Jones’ character, was not into the violent fashion photos but – PLOT TWIST – he’s the murderer all along.

Haley: I couldn’t tell if it was making fun of this mentality in the fashion industry, and in the film industry as well, that using violence and sexual violence as a jumping off point for creativity is a healthy way of expressing natural human urges. Faye Dunaway makes a joke about using murder to sell deodorant, so that people get bored with murder. They’re saying that repression is what actually turns you into a murderer. Tommy Lee Jones is so repressed he uses his split personality to murder people, and Faye Dunaway is just a nice woman who happens to make these really glossy violent images. So I do think it is ultimately a defense of the fashion industry. Helmut Newton actually did the prop photographs for this movie so he must have loved the thesis – they’re saying that it’s better to have someone like Helmut Newton out there in the world, producing these sorts of images, than a nice police officer who is secretly a murderer.

Anna: The fact that she was sharing the eyes of the killer meant she was turning actual dead bodies and murder victims into art. But that is a unique situation. It’s not like every single image of violence and fashion is the result of someone trying to process horrific psychic visions. I mean, to the extent of my knowledge.

Haley: She’s a photographer, she creates images, “seeing” is her business. There are certain points in the movie that are really surreal and play with that idea of sight versus vision, like before she knows who the killer is and she’s being chased by the murderer she can see herself being chased. There’s a lot of things with mirrors and reflected images and doubles…

Anna: …and the projection of the image. And how the goal with fashion photography to not document exactly but…

Haley: …yeah, it’s not bound by the rules of photojournalism. Faye Dunaway is sort of being accused of using her camera the way a killer would use a weapon.

Anna: Okay also, can we talk about the major fashion sequence, which is the one with the cars on fire?

Haley: The photoshoot with the cars on fire!! Omgggggggggggg.

Anna: I mean, we all love a good photoshoot montage.

Haley: Oh it was just the best. And Faye Dunaway is such a boss bitch.

Anna: *whispers* And her clothes were so good.

Haley: Yeah, her coats and silk blouses and big hair.

Anna: So 70s. But that montage also showed all the manipulation that goes into a shoot. In Helmut Newton photographs, even when he doesn’t have elaborate sets, theres always a surreal kind of glossy edge.

Haley: But even though I have to applaud this movie for their CONTROVERSIAL OPINION that being a fashion photography who produces violent images is not as bad as being a nice guy who is a fashionable murderer, the movie has a lot of shots of disembodied legs, close-ups of eyes…a lot of visual manifestations of the belief, I think, that fashion separates women from their bodies. That fashion with a capital “F” reduces women to mannequins.

Anna: Well, lets talk about THE MALE GAZE. Laura Mars is a female photographer, so the context is different. It’s sort of like when people compare Ellen von Unwerth and Terry Richardson, these soft porn images, but her context is a little different. And I know those are the two most obvious trendy photographers, like, circa 2009.

Haley: But I do think those are the most – well, I don’t know if fashion photography is less sexual today than it once was, but I do think Terry Richardson is quite different from the sexualized fashion photographs of the 70s.

Anna: Would you also say that horror movies are markedly different from their 70s versions, like how the Brian de Palma Carrie compares to, say, the Kimberly Pierce Carrie …do you have any opinions on that?

Haley: I have millions of opinions on the new Carrie . But yeah, there’s always so much hand-wringing over how fashion is bad for women, how it reduces them to props, to sexual objects. And most commentary focuses on how terrousing the photos are – terrousing being my hybrid word for “terrifying” and “arousing.” You have my permission to steal it. It comes in handy way more than you would expect – but not about the actual imagery and what the images are trying to express to us, how a Terry Richardson photograph of a girl licking a melting ice cream cone is completely different from a Petra Collins illustration of a vagina , yet her stuff is met with its own share of hand wringing.

Anna: And her photos are so autobiographical. Again, like Laura Mars, Petra Collins is a woman and she is documenting so much of her own experience.

Haley: And it’s so annoying when Tommy Lee Jones’ character is looking at some of the really violent images and makes some joke like, “Whatever happened to beautiful?” Without realizing that he just wants to see what his idea of beautiful is, which is probably all soft gaze and pastel sunsets or whatever.

Anna: Yes, it’s never an either/or situation. Our options are not just super violent imagery or very palatable pleasant non-offensive non-challenging ladies in dresses. Fashion doesn’t exist in a binary. Nothing exists in a binary. Fuck the binary. Okay, next movie .

Tags: halloween , horror , loose threads , scary movies , worn fashion journal