Luca Guadagnino's Most Fashion-Forward Films of All Time

Cartier jewelry is practically its own point in the love triangle at the heart of Challengers, Italian director Luca Guadagnino’s latest film featuring costume designs by Loewe creative director Jonathan Anderson. In the climactic match for which the tennis drama is named, everyone intently watches Tashi’s (Zendaya) husband (Mike Faist) and ex-boyfriend (Josh O’Connor)—two tennis pros and former friends who have been besotted with her since they were teenagers—duke it out on the court for her affections. Everyone, that is, except Tashi, who stares straight into the camera as everyone around her follows the ball. Dressed in a soft blue Loewe shirtdress, she adjusts her Ray-Bans, giving us a close-up view of the gold and diamonds adorning her wrists and neck: two Love bracelets, a Tank watch, and a Trinity pendant and tennis necklace stacked with the simple cross seen in the film’s flashbacks.

“Clothing is a fantastic thing, and what Luca realizes—and is so good at understanding as an artist—is how it really gives a view into who we are,” says Anderson. Through his Desire Trilogy—I Am Love (2009), A Bigger Splash (2015), and the Academy Award–winning Call Me by Your Name (2017)—Guadagnino held a mirror up to European haute bourgeoisie tastes and established himself as a master of subtle but telling detail, whether it was bookish teen Elio’s (Timothée Chalamet) collection of Lacoste polos in Call Me by Your Name or bigshot music producer Harry’s (Ralph Fiennes) predilection for bespoke Charvet shirts in A Bigger Splash.

With that single devastating shot of Tashi, we instantly comprehend the totems of success that this tennis prodigy–turned-coach drapes herself in, now that her sense of self-worth is mediated by her partner’s ability to win Grand Slams and score lucrative brand partnerships, her own career having been cut short by an injury. In this sense, they are akin to the jewel-tone Raf Simons–for–Jil Sander sheaths and heirloom-quality Damiani jewels Milanese society lady Emma Recchi (Tilda Swinton) donned in I Am Love to embody the high society wife. “Tashi becomes her ambition,” says Anderson. Throughout the film, she completes her glow-up from mid-aughts suburban teen in a Juicy Couture hoodie and what looks like the original Betsey Johnson homecoming dress—albeit one made with deadstock brocade from Anderson’s Spring 2020 Loewe collection.

Anderson is the latest fashion designer to join Guadagnino’s all-star wardrobe department roster alongside Simons, now Prada’s co-creative director; Pierpaolo Piccioli, recently of Valentino; and Celine head of knitwear Giulia Piersanti. “Luca’s approach to cinema has been a source of inspiration to me,” says Simons, who also created rockstar Marianne’s (Swinton) memorably muted when-in-Pantelleria wardrobe for A Bigger Splash. “Given his sense for aesthetics, his unique relationship with fashion is not surprising, but an integral part of his composition and cinematography.”

There have certainly been other notable designer/director collaborations in the history of cinema, like Yves Saint Laurent and Luis Buñuel for Belle de Jour (1967), and André Courrèges and Jacques Deray for La Piscine (1969, the source material for A Bigger Splash). Directors Baz Luhrmann and Sofia Coppola have enduring relationships with the houses of Prada and Chanel, respectively, but no other director has worked with an array of fashion designers as consistently as Guadagnino, or moved between feature films and fashion projects so seamlessly. 

Guadagnino has partnered with designers on each of his five feature films (his sixth, Queer, is in post-production) over the past 14 years since his international breakout I Am Love in 2009, while also racking up directing credits on fashion films that explore similar themes. A 2013 Cartier trilogy named for Paris landmarks—Jardins du Palais-Royal, Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, and Place de l’Opéra—served as a sort of field guide to Right Bank marriage proposals, while a Giorgio Armani Spring 2012 film titled One Plus One set a precedent for the three-way kiss in Challengers through its depiction of a woman pursued through the picturesque cobblestone streets of Cremona, Italy, by two male models with cut-glass cheekbones.

“Luca has a tight group of collaborators that are like a family,” says Piersanti, a collaborator on four of Guadagnino’s films. They first worked together on A Bigger Splash, and later reunited for Call Me By Your Name, Suspiria, and Bones and All (2022), as well as a Max limited series, We Are Who We Are (2020), about teens living on an American military base in Italy.

Even in Guadagnino’s less obviously brand-conscious films, style is of paramount importance, as in the Bonnie and Clyde–esque Bones and All, where a teenage cannibal (Chalamet) styles a flowery 1940s house dress into a shirt, or Suspiria, a tale of witchcraft set at a contemporary dance academy in Cold War–era Berlin, in which the human hair dresses worn for a séance feature elegant draping that takes cues from Madame Grès. Or, for that matter, Challengers, which undoubtedly features the most Stanford Tree merch that has ever been seen on screen outside of a campus promotional video. As Guadagnino told Women's Wear Daily of his latest endeavor, “Every item of clothing looks natural on the characters without being too ‘designed.’”