All the times David Lynch’s ‘wonderful and strange’ universe inspired the fashion world

In a career that spanned more than four decades, David Lynch, the director—who was also a musician, a visual artist, and an actor—established such a signature aesthetic that Lynchian became a shorthand adjective for things that were odd, disquieting, and, above all, dreamlike. It’s not at all surprising that over the years many fashion designers sought inspiration from his movies, like Blue Velvet, which starred Isabella Rossellini as a glamorous lounge singer, and Wild at Heart, with Laura Dern and Nicolas Cage playing a pair of young lovers on the run. But perhaps most enduring is Twin Peaks, a TV drama that was like a soap opera on acid and introduced the world to Agent Dale Cooper, played by Kyle MacLachlan, as he tried to find out who killed Laura Palmer.

An image of Laura Palmer on an Undercover Fall 2024 menswear jacket.

Vogue Runway

The Lynchian world runs so vast that the inspiration has manifested itself on the runway in myriad ways. Sometimes all a designer needs to do is cue up a specific song, as Rei Kawakubo did at the Comme des Garçons spring 2016 Blue Witch show when she played music from Blue Velvet or at the Creatures of the Wind spring 2017 show where designers Shane Gabier and Chris Peters invited the musician Julee Cruise to perform the theme song to Twin Peaks. “You can’t just do that to somebody! I cried through the entire show!” Caroline Polachek reportedly exclaimed afterwards.