British Vogue - 04.2020

Dressed to kill

Dark deeds don’t always demand dark clothes,

says writer and director Emerald Fennell, whose love

of pop and film fashion inspired her protagonist’s style

M

y fashion victimhood

started, as many things

do, with Britney Spears.

I adored her marabou

hair scrunchies. Her dashing way

with a snake at the 2001 VMAs

inspired me to get a butterfly-shaped belly-button piercing.

The fact that it became dangerously infected was neither

here nor there, and certainly didn’t prevent me from flaunting

it, nascent gangrene and all, in a pair of patchwork Diesel

hipsters. It wasn’t long before Christina (Xtina) Aguilera

came thrusting on to the scene, and, therefore, a mere matter

of time before I was sporting synthetic red hair extensions

and low-slung pleather trousers that got me banned

from the school cafeteria.

I’m sorry to report that things have only gone downhill

since then. There is no trend too silly, too unflattering,

or too misguided that I haven’t immediately hauled myself

on to its bandwagon – clinging on

for dear life – wearing clogs. It’s

the possibility of clothes that is so

alluring. The idea that you are only

one tiny beret away from winning

the Nobel Prize in Literature; the

optimistic belief that your old white

nightie paired with the right

insouciant cardigan will transform

you into French bombshell idly

perusing the flower market.

There have been occasions when my best friend (a woman

who truly only has my best interests at heart) has taken one

look at me and said, simply: “No.” I ignore her every time,

of course, but I appreciate her attempts to save me from

myself. Because, for me, clothes – no matter how outlandish

or ridiculous – are a passport to another world, to try

on a different identity for a day.

When it came to thinking about the clothes the protagonist

would wear in my first film as director and writer, the

upcoming Promising Young Woman, I was maniacally specific.

Promising Young Woman is a revenge thriller, whose central

character, Cassandra (played by the staggeringly brilliant >

Above, from top:

Carey Mulligan

as Cassandra in

Promising Young

Woman; Emerald

Fennell (centre) on

set with Mulligan,

Laverne Cox and

Bo Burnham, who

also star; a still

from the film

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