Build a wardrobe fit for a jaunt to the uncanny valley.
From Audrey Horne’s ineffably sensual sweater sets in Twin Peaks to Wild at Heart’s Sailor in his iconic snakeskin blazer, the fashion in the films of late auteur David Lynch danced upon the line between the bizarre and the beautiful. Of his work as the unhinged Bobby Peru in Wild at Heart, Willem Dafoe reportedly admitted: “I put on that costume, learned my lines and I was good to go. Because all the triggers were there, the wardrobe was perfect, the scene somehow fit a fantasy.” The sartorial equivalent of the uncanny valley, these wardrobes were the first on-screen bastion betraying Lynch’s fascination with how a veneer of the sublime can be the ideal percolator for something unmentionably grotesque, a duality that has inspired everyone from teen girls donning pleated skirts to designers at the top of their runway games.
Lynch's style often juxtaposes the ordinary with the unsettling — over a decade before the “normcore” trend was officially named by now-defunct forecasting group K-HOLE, Twin Peaks protagonist Agent Dale Cooper (portrayed by the inimitable Kyle MacLachlan)’s FBI gear manifested as the perfect nondescript uniform, representing his quest for order amidst the chaos of the town that slowly revealed its seedy secrets through his investigation. As recently as January 2025, a new iteration of normcore, defined by its convergence with the past few years’ fixations upon “quiet luxury,” has been noted on the runways of brands like Auralee and Lemaire, labels that undeniably have a handle on the classic suit and trench coat, the main components of an Agent Cooper look. As opposed to the original wave of “normcore” in 2013, these garments are less in the New Balance-sweat suit-dad cap camp and focus more upon precise, louche tailoring and subtly luxurious fabrics — owning the power of simplicity instead of eschewing it or parlaying it into irony.
Luckily for us, this “new norm” has found its way into more accessible brands’ M.O.s, with Uniqlo U rendering Lemaire-ish neutrals at a tenth of the latter’s price points and Studio Nicholson carving out its own storied niche in the minimalist playbook. Both brands owe a debt of aura to Agent Cooper’s understated trench and navy wool suits.
On the diametrically opposite end of the aesthetic spectrum (i.e. a far cry from “quiet”), Nicolas Cage’s Wild at Heart uniform of a sleazy-but-severe snakeskin blazer has directly inspired at minimum two runway shows: Khaite’s SS23 presented a stark, somber take on Sailor’s snakeskin, while Altuzarra’s SS17 paid homage not only to Cage’s character, but also his partner in crime, Laura Dern’s Lula, using the specific shade of pink and ribbed off-the-shoulder knits she sports in the film. Though the film’s visual D.N.A. is so rooted in the brash beauty of the ‘90s that thrifting sultry sweaters and neon halter tops is the most accurate way to capture these characters’ styles, an oft-overlooked resource that actually lived through the era and continues to pay tribute to it in designs both beautiful and bombastic is Betsey Johnson. Though Johnson’s specific brand of exuberant femininity might seem passé at the moment, it’s only a matter of time before her nearly bizarre crocheted heels and lace-inflected slip dresses regain momentum — when they do, it’ll begin on mood boards prominently featuring Lynch’s Lula.
Laura Dern makes an even more overt appearance in Raf Simons’ work for his eponymous label, with photos of Sandy, her character in Blue Velvet, emblazoned on distressed sweaters in Simons’ FW19 menswear show. You can scoop one of these pieces up on Grailed for about $350 at time of writing, but more than entreating us to buy, Simons’ always-subversive ethos seems to suggest a DIY — it’s a collective societal failure that there aren’t any Dern patches readily available for purchase (save for a deep cut from her non-Lynch turn in Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains), but a hero with some printable fabric sheets and a few impactful screenshots could duly fill this void.
Though it’s difficult to find quotes from the designer herself, it seems that Rei Kawakubo’s SS16 collection for Comme des Garçons, a label known to play with inversion and perversion in a decidedly Lynchian manner, was also inspired by Blue Velvet. Kawakubo had sourced rich cobalt swatches of faux fur, which she fashioned into gigantic pieces that reduced the models to laborers tasked with carrying the near-sentient sculptures down the runway. Legend has it that mere days before the show, Kawakubo’s sound designer Frederic Sanchez suggested they play Blue Velvet Revisited, an album of tracks inspired by the film, during the presentation. The most iconic look in the collection appears to be a huge blue rosette, evoking both the titular color and the film’s opening shot of perfectly-maintained roses representing the idyllic vision of a suburb Lynch then goes on to undermine with the chaos and violence occurring behind the white picket fence.
One of the more obvious nods to Lynch in mainstream fashion came by way of Alessandro Michele’s FW16 menswear show, where models clad in opulent mismatch trotted down a runway clearly meant to resemble Twin Peaks’ heaven-or-hell-coded Red Room, though instead of recalling the doomed youth of the Pacific Northwestern town, the clothes in this collection could easily have been cribbed from the wardrobe of Catherine Coulson’s “Log Lady,” one of the most iconic, yet incomprehensible characters to come out of the series. In her rumpled tweeds, oversized glasses, and quirky accessories, the Log Lady’s look is intentionally unkempt, yet there’s a quiet elegance to her disheveled style, as per Michele’s sensibilities that transcend the house he’s placed at and render him an easily-identifiable designer. For better or worse, this means that aside from inelegant attempts at fast fashion dupes, the only way to borrow Michele’s style cues without a designer-compatible coffer is to, like the Log Lady, hone a preternaturally sharp eye when it comes to sourcing vintage — brocade suits and velveteen togs are curiously under-searched-for at the moment, and thus a great place to start curating a wardrobe the Log itself would approve of.
From the runways of Raf Simons and Rei Kawakubo to the streets of the Pacific Northwest in 2025, Lynch’s fashion legacy continues to influence designers who embrace the unsettling beauty of his universe. If you want to dress like a character in the world of David Lynch, especially in honor of the director’s recent passing, remember that adapting Lynchian style is just as much about paying tribute to the unseen as it is about making visible the iconic silhouettes and textures that adorn the director’s motley crew. 🌀
Em Seely-Katz is the creator of the fashion blog Esque, the News Editor of HALOSCOPE, and a writer, stylist, and anime-watcher about town. You can usually find them writing copy for niche perfume houses or making awful collages at @that.esque on Instagram.