New Wave is à la mode again

Effortless and improvised French flavour is among the most talked-about trends in fall women's wear

This summer the fashion flock will find no greener pastures to feed on than "Nouvelle Vague: The French New Wave, Then and Now."

Running until Aug. 22, it's a program of films being presented by Cinematheque Ontario by way of celebrating the 50th anniversary of a movement that set new standards not only in cinema but also in chic.

In the entire history of movies, there is no sequence more stylish than the finger-snapping dance performed by Anna Karina in Band of Outsiders, released in 1964, being screened on July 13, and still jaw-droppingly fresh.

Before becoming the wife of director Jean-Luc Godard and the star of several of his other movies, Karina was a model. Born in Denmark, she was named Hanne Karin Blarke Bayer. It was Coco Chanel herself who suggested the change in moniker, which like her own has become synonymous with nonchalance.

In Band of Outsiders, with her long hair restrained in an unstudied bow and topped by a fedora – a fedora moment right up there with Judy Garland's "Get Happy" number – Karina is a study in what a Parisienne can do with a skirt and sweater.

This effortless and improvised French flavour has been among the most talked-about trends in fall women's wear. Award-winning menswear designer Scott Sternberg, at the forefront of the equally talked-about new wave in American fashion, also acknowledges a French influence. He chose to call his label Band of Outsiders, and his collection for the coming season was inspired by La Chinoise, another Godard title.

Male icons of the French screen showing up in the Cinematheque series include Jean-Pierre Léaud, the New Wave's "it" boy who, after the heyday of Hollywood beefcake, pioneered a skinny ideal of male beauty recently revived by Hedi Slimane during his time at Dior Homme.

In the post-Slimane mould, there is Andy Gillet who is among a current crop of hot young French actors. A model who appeared in a commercial for Kenzo Power, advertised as a perfume for men, Gillet is refreshingly unembarrassed by his prettiness in Romance of Astrea and Celadon, a 2007 release demonstrating that director Eric Rohmer, a New Wave master, has kept his talent dazzlingly alive.

Based on a 17th-century novel and populated by nymphs, shepherds and druids, the movie is a bucolic trip-and-a-half, with a soundtrack featuring the cooing of horny pigeons and a wardrobe that might have sprung from Vivienne Westwood in her pagan phase but in fact represents the artistry of Pierre-Jean Larroque, a costume designer who has won the César once and been nominated five other times for France's equivalent of the Oscar.

Gillet makes his first appearance dressed in a straw hat and belted homespun chemise that is a lesson in all kinds of costume history.

Regrettably, the history of costume design in French film has not been given the kind of attention lavished on the big names of Hollywood. Even on some of the films themselves there is no credit given. And, of course, you have no right to expect one from a movie such as Godard's Masculine Feminine (1966), which features a conversation with a person described in large letters as a "dialogue with a consumer product."

Clearly, Godard is more interested in questioning the impact of American brands – it's impossible not to notice the Tide detergent at the kitchen sink – than he is in pointing out that the white go-go boots are by André Courrèges.

Never explicitly – that's simply not his style – but Claude Chabrol, another New Wave giant who continues to walk tall, puts designer duds to potent use in A Girl Cut in Two, with Ludivine Sagnier and Benoît Magimel, two of France's biggest young stars, and clothes from a list of fashion houses, including Paul Smith, Jean Paul Gaultier, Missoni, Vanessa Bruno, Céline and Chanel. But the threads are nothing compared to the way Chabrol uses them to sly, twisted, authentic effect.