Fashion Movies
We enjoy movies about fashion — films in which clothing, designers, models, magazines and the garment business drive the story.
Fashion is a glamorous industry of beautiful people — at least on the surface. The movies collected here look at it from every side: the insider satire that tells the other side of the story, the biography of the orphan who built an empire, the magazine editor who terrorises her assistants, the bridesmaid with twenty-seven dresses in her closet, and the counterterrorist who dreams of being a hairdresser. Each film below has its own profile page in this section, with its story, its cast and its fashion credentials set out in full.
The list runs from the garment business to the red carpet. Garmento goes beneath the seams of New York's rag business; Coco Before Chanel portrays the early life of Gabrielle Chanel; The Devil Wears Prada takes a naive young woman into the office of a ruthless magazine editor; 27 Dresses counts the cost of always being a bridesmaid; and You Don't Mess with the Zohan finds its fashion angle in a Manhattan hair salon. Alongside the profiled films, this page keeps notes on three more fashion-relevant pictures — Zoolander, Head over Heels and Raising Helen — whose stories run through modelling and fashion as well.
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Garmento
A dark and comical look beneath the seams of New York's rag business, by industry insider Michele Maher — a bankrupt design house, a rival jeans company and the PR Jeans launch that sets off a buying frenzy.
Coco Before Chanel
Audrey Tautou as Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel, the orphan who journeyed from a seamstress job and cabaret stages to build a fashion empire and define the modern woman.
The Devil Wears Prada
A naive young woman comes to New York and lands a job as assistant to Miranda Priestly, one of the city's biggest — and most ruthless — magazine editors.
27 Dresses
Jane, played by Katherine Heigl, is an idealistic, selfless perennial bridal attendant whose own happy ending is nowhere in sight — until her sister captures the heart of the boss Jane secretly loves.
You Don't Mess with the Zohan
Adam Sandler as the finest counterterrorist agent in the Israeli army, who fakes his death and travels to Manhattan to live his dream — as a hairdresser.
Tie Dye Movies
Tie dye making videos for the clothing industry: Tie Dye 101 and Advanced Tie Dye Techniques, with True Tie Dye's Tom and Martine.
Zoolander
Male supermodel Derek Zoolander, three years the Male Model of the Year, is beaten by newcomer Hansel and recruited by fashion czar Mugatu for his Derelicte line — unaware that Mugatu plans to brainwash him into assassinating the Malaysian Prime Minister to protect cheap labour for fashion production. Journalist Matilda slowly suspects, and tries to stop him.
Head over Heels
Amanda, unlucky in love, moves in with four models who party when they are not modelling, and falls for Jim across the way — then, watching his apartment one night, sees him apparently kill someone, and follows him to find out what he did with the body. The woman, it turns out, is a secret agent who did not die.
Raising Helen
Helen Harris's career at a top modelling agency is on the rise — days at fashion shows, nights at the city's hottest clubs — until one phone call makes her responsible for her sister's three children, and the glamour girl must choose between the life she has always loved and the new loves of her life, with support from Dan Parker, the pastor and principal of the children's school.
Why Fashion Makes Good Cinema
Fashion gives a film three gifts at once: a visual world that photographs beautifully, a workplace with real stakes — money, reputation and seasons that cannot be missed — and characters whose jobs are already performances. The designer, the editor, the model and the stylist all present a self to the world for a living, which is why fashion films so often turn on the gap between the glamour and the business underneath. Garmento builds its whole comedy on that gap: beneath the seams of New York's rag business sit shady dealings and ruthlessness, an absurd world where those qualities are themselves fashionable. The Devil Wears Prada plays the same gap for drama inside a great fashion magazine, and Coco Before Chanel plays it as history, following a seamstress whose refusal to dress like everyone else remade women's clothing.
The comedies find their fashion angles in unexpected places. 27 Dresses is a wedding film whose heroine's fashion record is a closet full of bridesmaid dresses — twenty-seven assignments in other people's style. The Zohan turns a hair salon into the front line of a man's second life. Even the supporting notes on this page follow the pattern: a male supermodel at the centre of a fashion czar's plot, a young woman who moves in with four models, and a modelling-agency career woman whose glamorous life is rearranged by family.
Reading About Fashion Movies
If you prefer to read instead of watching, the fashion movie summary page collects the site's written summaries of fashion films, and the TikTok fashion page covers the newest home of short fashion film. The fashion magazines and fashion books directories round out the print side of the same world. And for the films themselves, start with the profiles below — Garmento has long been the favourite of this collection, but every film here earns its place by having something real to say about clothes and the people who make, sell, wear and judge them.
A Note on the Supporting Films
The three unprofiled films on this page earn their notes honestly. Zoolander is the fashion satire that reached the widest audience, and its plot — a supermodel brainwashed by a fashion czar to protect cheap garment labour — is the rare mainstream comedy whose villain is a sourcing decision. Head over Heels uses modelling as its heroine's social world rather than her job, and Raising Helen puts a modelling-agency career at the centre of a family story. Together they show how thoroughly fashion had soaked into mainstream film by the early 2000s: the industry had become a setting any audience was assumed to understand.
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Common Questions
What movies are about the fashion industry?
The profiled films in this section: Garmento, about New York's garment business; Coco Before Chanel, about Gabrielle Chanel's early life; The Devil Wears Prada, set at a fashion magazine; 27 Dresses, a wedding comedy built on bridesmaid fashion; and You Don't Mess with the Zohan, a comedy about a would-be hairdresser — with notes on Zoolander, Head over Heels and Raising Helen as well.
Which fashion movie is the favourite of this collection?
Garmento — the insider satire of the rag business written and directed by Michele Maher. It is the one film here made from inside the garment industry itself, and it shows the business's money, schemes and absurdities as no outside story could.
Where can I read summaries of fashion movies?
The fashion movie summary page collects written summaries of fashion films, and each profiled movie in this section has its own page with its story, cast and fashion angle set out in full.