How did the future look like before Blade Runner? The shiny PVC of Courregès, the Jetsons geometry of Cardin – and Barbarella’s Paco Rabanne armour. Then everything changed: the fantasy of an uncomplicated lunar utopia crashed to Earth, re-emerging as sci-fi dystopia. Well, according to Philip K Dick anyway: his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, published in 1968, became the source text for Ridley Scott’s cinema classic, released 14 years later.
Set in 2019 Los Angeles – yes, the future is closer than it’s ever been – Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), an ex-cop, is a 'Blade Runner’. His role? To assassinate replicants, androids that look like real human beings and evoke human emotions. Inevitably Deckard begins to question his own identity in this future world – what is real and what is not?
What’s impressive about Blade Runner is that it still looks like the future, while other films made in the Eighties look like they went out with the Atari. No mean feat given that it subliminally mined the 20th century for references, from Edward Hopper to Joan Crawford, twisting the prism with an ultramodern soundtrack by Vangelis and creating the feeling of a grungy western Tokyo. It’s the ultimate case of fashion recycling itself to create something new. Now it’s coming back. This autumn’s Blade Runner 2049 features Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford returning as Deckard. Newspapers have boasted that Ford can still fit into his original costume, 30 years on.
Leave it to Raf Simons for the straight-up tribute. He based his entire SS18 collection on it, summoning the fashion pack to a Chinatown grocer in downtown New York for a collection that was bathed in wet neon fog, punctuated by references to his own past – the Joy Division and New Order graphics by Peter Savile printed on lanterns. Scrolling LED badges pierced clothes and signs glowed ‘REPLICANTS’. Every look featured an umbrella, the key piece a rainhat-scarf hybrid.
Working with a stellar art department led by designer Lawrence G Paull and art director David L Snyder, and featuring illustrations by Syd Mead (who also worked on Tron) and sketches by Ridley Scott himself, the original Blade Runner’s costume designers Charles Knode and Michael Kaplan have become, by cultural stealth, stylists as influential as anyone who shows on a catwalk. And with Blade Runner 2049 hitting cinemas as designers create their AW18 collections, to be presented in January, expect more of this now-classic strain of futurism. Men want to look like heroes. You don’t need a clairvoyant to know that.
The Autumn/Winter 2017 issue of GQ Style is available on newsstands and to download.
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