When you think about it, buying vintage (read: used) clothing is kind of weird. That dress has spent years with someone else; the previous owner might have been wearing it when they got a new job, or got fired, or were proposed to, or were broken up with, or when they did something unspeakably evil.
That’s the inspiration for A24’s new beguiling art-horror movie In Fabric, which debuted to overwhelmingly positive reviews at the Toronto International Film Festival last year. “I always had this fascination with objects,” director Peter Strickland (The Duke of Burgundy) said about the film. “I think what started it was going to secondhand shops. You find clothes with stains on them, you find clothes which stink of body odor, you find clothes from dead people. Already, there’s a haunting. You buy a shirt, and probably someone cried having to give that shirt away because it belonged to someone they loved who died.”
It’s like Death Bed: The Bed That Eats, except Death Dress: The Dress That Kills. Here’s the official plot summary:
A lonely woman, recently separated from her husband, visits a bewitching London department store in search of a dress that will transform her life. She’s fitted with a perfectly flattering, artery-red gown — which, in time, will come to unleash a malevolent curse and unstoppable evil, threatening everyone who comes into its path.
In Fabric, which stars Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Hayley Squires, Leo Bill, and Gwendoline Christie, opens later this year.
