Eyes Wide Shut

Jonathan Anderson said in his autumn-winter 2024 preview: “Eyes Wide Shut is one of my favorite films, and I actually think it’s a great Christmas film.” It was, however, two viewings last summer that led to this JW Anderson collection. “I’ve never made anything about a film before,” said Anderson. “This is also the sexiest we’ve ever gone – as far as I can go.” Fashion world has a great affection for this Stanley Kubrick fim. Lately, Puppets & Puppets had an entire collection dedicated to this spicy romance-thriller. In case of Anderson, the result was a diverse design range, spanning from prim to perverse: both in menswear and women’s pre-fall, at moments in a Prada-ist manner (fun fact: in the 2000s, the Irish designer used to work around Prada at Brown Thomas in Dublin; there he met Manuela Pavesi, Miuccia’s right-hand, where she consulted the brand’s merchandising). For the collection’s hero print, Anderson contacted Christiane, Kubrick’s widow, regarding her paintings that the director used in his films (including A Clockwork Orange and Eyes Wide Shut). These paintings were what spanned the triptych knit jersey dresses: other pieces featured a portrait of a family cat, a pot plant with a barcode still on its tub, and a car interior. Said Anderson: “I thought what was interesting is the psychology of this idea of bringing someone from the background to the foreground.” This was about as literal as Anderson got. The collection contained neither Christmas trees nor masks – although Nicole Kidman was on the soundtrack, delivering the near-to-last line of dialogue – however a palpable spirit of twisted bourgeois eroticism ran through the darkened runway as fil rouge. Red, with all its implications, headlined in an oversized velvet evening jacket for men. The jacket’s womenswear counterpoint was a red velvet jumpsuit with one disordered, asymmetrically cut leg that seemed at the intersection of sleepwear and evening wear. Anderson’s own recurring predilection for shorts was satisfied afresh via some wonderful rib knit pieces – sometimes partnered with cardigans, sometimes not – from whose edges oozed suggestive, unsettlingly domestic whorls of satin. Dressing his female and male models in tights over panties gave a less figure-skating aspect to the trophy underwear trend.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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In just four years Puppets and Puppets has evolved from a fashion project by an artist to a bona fide fashion brand. Carly Mark’s Eyes Wide Shut-inspired spring 2023 collection was arguably her most wearable. What seems to be happening is that the designs are becoming more aligned with Mark herself, concurrent with her development as an entrepreneur. The designer made the switch to fashion because she was feeling isolated in the art world. “I like interacting with humans,” she explained at a preview. “So I knew I wanted to do something creative, but it needed to be in a way where I was interacting with other bodies and having conversations.” The name she gave the brand is a reference to a cyberpunk anime called Ghost in the Shell; over time her inspirations have become ever more cinematic. And there is a shift from a more illustrative take on clothing to a more photographic one, both in a metaphorical and literal sense. The “demon” print in the spring line-up, which looks anatomical, is actually a manipulated still from the movie Scrooge. If that seems random, you might recall that Eyes Wide Shut is set at Christmas time. This print shares space in the collection with a jacquard based on Gustave Doré’s engravings of Dante’s Inferno and a sweater with an abstract orgy theme (another reference to Stanley Kubrick’s film). The final look features moonbows that call attention to the bust at the same time that volume emphasizes the hips. One of the reasons the designer took Eyes Wide Shut as her inspiration was because Nicole Kidman was such a powerful presence. In one of the scenes in which the actress revealed her strength she was physically vulnerable, wearing only high-cut panties and a camisole. “I’ve been thinking about Nicole Kidman specifically this season because I just turned 34 and I’m growing a business and I’m growing my confidence; I have to in order to run a business,” Mark said. “So I think about being a woman who is sexual, and business minded, and living in a city, and trying to hold my own, and trying to be intelligent, and trying to connect with other people. It’s hard, and it’s funny, and it’s fun, and it’s difficult – and it’s all the things.”