THE JOURNAL

Ryan Coogler (right) on the set of Sinners with Michael B Jordan. Photograph by LANDMARK MEDIA/Alamy
There is a 1990 photograph of avant-garde director Abel Ferrara (King Of New York, Bad Lieutenant) curled up in a chair wearing a skinny ensemble of black blazer, black jeans and boots. It’s an iconic shot – Ferrara’s punk rebel sensibilities on show. But it’s also a perfectly untapped bit of style inspiration. “You could put a SAINT LAURENT watermark over that photo, and you’d know no better,” says Hagop Kourounian, the man behind @directorfits on Instagram.
Kourounian has made it his mission to document and archive filmmakers’ personal styles – including photographs like this one. Ferrara was in fact photographed by SAINT LAURENT for a 2023 campaign (along with David Cronenberg, Jim Jarmusch and Takeshi Kitano). “But he’s always been that guy,” Kourounian adds.
Directors have, actually, always been that guy (or girl), it’s just that they’ve long been overshadowed by the public’s sweethearts: the movie stars. But they’re finally getting their dues thanks to platforms like Director Fits.
What makes their style so alluring? Filmmakers, and specifically the auteurs, Kourounian explains, are world builders. “And they dress for the worlds they create.”
One thing that is immediately recognisable from Kourounian’s archives is how these directors’ wardrobes become an extension of their movie tropes. Wes Anderson famously looks like a character from his eccentric cinematic universe – corduroy and softly structured tailoring. And Spike Lee is still decked out in New York sports merch, like Mookie in 1989’s Do The Right Thing. There’s a sense of creative coherence between personal style and each director’s cinematic language.
Kourounian’s own fascination began with Martin Scorsese’s big-buckle belts from the 1970s. His first realisation was that the great filmmakers of that era had one piece of clothing they were very particular about. Largely, it’s about comfort, but it’s also about instinctively knowing what works for them. Brian De Palma and his utilitarian safari jackets; Stanley Kubrick’s parka coat, worn daily for 24 years, and Paul Thomas Anderson’s breezy linen shirts, for comfort while moving around on set.

Wes Anderson at the 74th annual Cannes Film Festival, 13 July 2021. Photograph by Xinhua/Alamy Live News

Spike Lee at the 44th Cannes International Film Festival, 15 May 1991. Photograph by Mario Goldman/AFP via Getty Images
On closer inspection, none of this is by mistake. “The best-dressed directors are particular about every detail,” Kourounian says. “They make every decision down to the costume design, so they’re constantly having conversations about fashion. I’m thinking of Wim Wenders’ love for Yohji Yamamoto.”
The German director even walked on the runway for his longtime friend Yamamoto and never shoots a film without one of the designer’s pieces, calling it his “second skin”. In one story, Wenders famously repurposed a Yohji jacket pocket himself so that it would fit his iPhone.
Long before Instagram accounts began cataloguing them, vintage photographs of filmmakers still carried a certain mystique. Author and journalist Natasha A Fraser, who has chronicled Hollywood for decades, recalls an image of Akira Kurosawa at the 1986 Oscars, flanked by Billy Wilder and John Huston. “I wanted his shades, his tuxedo,” she says. “His elegant confidence made an impression.” The Seven Samurai director also always cut a recognisable figure on set thanks to his trademark sunglasses and bucket hat.
“To the most successful directors, the set was their kingdom,” Fraser says. Legends like John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock and Federico Fellini ruled through force of personality. Eye patches, severe suiting, broad-brimmed hats, distinctive frames – all now fawned over in archival imagery; all denoting charisma and power.

Josh Safdie shooting Marty Supreme in Manhattan, New York, 7 October 2024. Photograph by Jose Perez/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images
The tradition continues. Today, on-set photography is where some of the best looks continue being archived, and where younger directors are crafting their own mythologies through some genuinely cool looks. Recently, an image circulated of Sinners director Ryan Coogler waist deep in a lake wearing Columbia fishing gear. It’s such a cool outfit that it somehow steers the spotlight away from the man standing beside him, Michael B Jordan.
Josh Safdie, rarely seen without his New Balance sneakers, also hires a professional on-set photographer. His leather bomber jackets and sharp collars while shooting Marty Supreme feel deliberately referential, echoing Golden Age titans like Howard Hawks and John Ford. It’s almost as though directors realise these photographs will become circulated and mythologised for the future.
But their influence extends into other art forms, too. When discussing the topic with María Zardoya, lead singer of the Grammy-nominated band The Marías, she pointed to the fashions of Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar as inspiration. Zardoya’s outfits for early album covers are even a direct nod to his style.
“His incomparable use of colour onscreen translates to his style off screen as well,” Zardoya says. “From wearing a full pink suit on the red carpet to subtle pops of red in silk scarves, it’s evident that Almodóvar sees the world as a beautiful, whimsical playground.”
Almodóvar stepped from behind the camera to front Prada’s autumn/winter campaign in 2017. Other fashion houses have caught on, replacing actors with filmmakers as the face of haute couture. If that 1990 shot of Ferrara is anything to go by, his collaboration with SAINT LAURENT is more than a perfect match: perhaps it was on known-cinephile Anthony Vaccarello’s mood boards.
But all the recent kudos is really an overdue acknowledgment. Because while audiences previously kept their eyes on the stars, it’s the directors who now burn brightest in the style stakes.

Orson Welles filming PARIS BRULE T’IL? (Is Paris Burning?) in France, 9 August 1965. Photograph by Reporters Associés/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
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