RIP David Lynch, Your Favorite Designer's Favorite Director
David Lynch, the genius filmmaker who epitomized Americana as much as he caricatured it, is dead at 78. It's a tremendous creative loss, and as good a reason as ever to revisit Lynch's unimpeachable catalog: Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, and especially Mulholland Drive are essential cinema.
Lynch cast a massive shadow over film but the influence of his dreamlike, often nightmarish, vision extends to basically every medium, many of which he himself explored.
Not only did Lynch inspire an entire generation of musicians — just search "Twin Peaks" on Spotify — but he'd also get in on the act, appearing on a 2009 Danger Mouse track and partnering with singer Chrystabell on several albums, including one released in 2024.
Like the actual universe, the David Lynch-iverse is intimidatingly vast.
That's partially what makes him such a compelling figure: You can track Lynch obscura for years and still not completely uncover every enigma.
As such, Lynch's relationship to fashion is particularly deep. That's partially because, for every designer who actually collaborated with Lynch, there's about five dozen more who created more oblique homages to his work.
On the direct side of things, there's former KENZO creative directors and Opening Ceremony founders Carol Lim & Humberto Leon, for whom Lynch designed the Fall/WInter 2014 collection's runway and soundtrack. He directed ads for Gucci and Dior. He exhibited short films and paintings at COMME des GARÇONS' galleries in Osaka and Seoul. He exhibited at last year's Milan Design Week (not fashion, sure, but adjacent).
More indirectly, Lynch's oeuvre, especially the Mark Frost-co-created Twin Peaks, has probably inspired more things in fashion than any other single TV series. I'm not talking official collaborations, to be clear, but stylistic references.
Take co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons, two famously devoted Lynch fans.
The now-defunct eponymous Raf Simons label FW16 directly pulled from Twin Peaks, for instance, in only one of Simons' many overt call-outs to Lynch.
And Prada remains enraptured by Twin Peaks.
Its FW22 show memorably kicked off with Agent Cooper himself, whereas previous Prada shows and campaigns more indirectly referenced Lynch and his signature work.
That's just the tip of the mountain (or peak, as it were).
Labels as disparate as Khaite and MSGM have borrowed Lynch's music for runway soundtracks. Levi's Vintage Clothing once created "Twin Peaks" jeans. Japanese fashion brand Hysteric Glamour has borrowed Twin Peaks art. Nike once released a pair of "Twin Peaks" Dunks.
Meanwhile, Jun Takahashi, pop culture-obsessed designer of UNDERCOVER, dedicated his entire Fall/Winter 2024 menswear collection to Lynch's signature show, yielding callouts both overt and understated.
David Lynch was, and is, never not in style.
You can go even deeper on Lynch's intimate relationship with fashion, if you'd like.
Lynch was so admired by the industry that his unexpected appearances at wholly disparate events weren't all that surprising. Sure, he might be at some high-falutin' Fashion Group International gala or hobnobbing with longtime Tiffany & Co. collaborator Paloma Picasso.
He was as likely to sit front-row at Chanel as he was to premiere a partnership between, of all people, John Varvatos and Ringo Starr.
The famously well-coiffed director was also famously well-heeled. Lycnh's manner of dress was as direct as his manner as speech, both key in shaping the man's memorable presence.
As such, it was quite appropriate that Lynch would go minorly viral, at least in the menswear world, a few years back.
All it took was Lynch opining about his pants problems to create the perfect bite-sized encapsulation of his kinda funny, kinda odd, always exacting POV.
"I am searching for a good pair of pants. I never found a pair of pants that I just love," he said.
"I like to wear the same thing every day and feel comfortable. It's a fit, it's a certain kind of feeling, and if they're not right, which they never are, it's a sadness. You know, it interrupts the flow of happiness. I'm working on it, believe me."
