Summer Reading

The photographs span nearly a century. Dorothy Arzner, one of Hollywood's first female directors, photographed on set in the 1930s in trousers, at a time when that alone counted as a statement. Federico Fellini in his fedora on the set of Juliet of the Spirits, worn low and a little theatrical, in keeping with a director who always seemed half-ringmaster. The hat was a Borsalino, the Italian house that made the one Marcello Mastroianni wore in 8½, later naming a model after Fellini himself. Pier Paolo Pasolini filming Porcile in 1969. Peter Bogdanovich on the set of Mask in 1985.

Sofia Coppola's Charvet shirt is the closest thing the book has to a running character, sometimes buttoned to the top, sometimes layered loose over a tank, worn across every film she's made since Marie Antoinette. Charvet is a men's shirtmaker, which is part of why the look reads as unbothered rather than fashion-forward. She's said she keeps several on hand while shooting "so that I don't have to think about what I'm wearing." Hayao Miyazaki's uniform ran the other direction, a white apron thrown over whatever he'd put on that morning, a gray blazer some days, a wool vest on others, work clothes in the most literal sense. Agnès Varda, known off set for her bowl cut and her taste for color, appears here lounging on the set of Documenteur in 1981. Euzhan Palcy is caught mid-shoot on Siméon in 1992. Spike Lee's sports hat and varsity jacket turn up across Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X so often they've become shorthand for him.

David Lynch is buttoned to the collar in nearly every photograph anyone took of him working, on Twin Peaks, on Blue Velvet, in the editing room, even delivering his daily weather forecasts for KCRW in the same starched white shirt he wore everywhere else. The book places him alongside Fellini as one of the directors who made the fully fastened shirt a fixture rather than a look, worn so consistently it stopped seeming like a choice at all.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder appears bare-midriffed on the set of World on a Wire in 1973. Wes Anderson has worn some version of the same corduroy suit across decades of press photography, consistently enough that critics now read it as part of his films, always with the same shoe underneath it, a pair of Clarks Wallabees, chunky and suede, even with the tailoring. Paul Thomas Anderson, on the Boogie Nights set, dressed in a way that let him blend into the crew he was directing rather than stand apart from the cast.

Steven Spielberg in his cap and jacket on the set of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. John Ford wrapped in his serape while shooting The Searchers in 1955. Neither outfit was chosen for the camera. Both were put on once in the morning and worn without further thought for the rest of the day.

Yamamoto's afterword ends the book. Writing about the difference between formal dressing and personal style, he notes that the red-carpet uniform of jacket and white tie can flatten a person into a type: "That is not appealing to me." It's the same instinct running through every photograph in the book. The clothes were never separate from the work. They were part of how it got done.