Through Polo Ralph Lauren, Gucci, and Calvin Klein, Bret Easton Ellis’s ‘Less Than Zero’ captured ’80s L.A.’s lived-in sense of privilege.Through Polo Ralph Lauren, Gucci, and Calvin Klein, Bret Easton Ellis’s ‘Less Than Zero’ captured ’80s L.A.’s lived-in sense of privilege.
It’s been over 40 years since a young writer named Bret Easton Ellis jolted the literary world awake with his debut novel Less Than Zero, and it was in 1987 that Ellis’s tale of shiftless Angelenos Clay, Blair, and Julian made the jump from the page to the silver screen. And while the film adaptation was contentious at the time, it is impossible to watch it all these years later and not view it as a time capsule of the era’s style. Ellis’s world was—and is—populated with sartorial touchstones like big shoulders, skinny ties, and flashy designer names; It’s a vibe that is being pushed back into the zeitgeist with today’s release of Ryan Murphy’s adaptation of The Shards.
Since his days as a burgeoning author at Bennington College through 2023, when he returned to the same subject matter in his novel The Shards, Ellis has always explored the money-hungry Designer Industrial Complex that fueled the pomp and circumstance of the ’80s. Through his unique form of unsentimental, glassy-eyed voyeurism—though it is perhaps the subject he knows best as a born-and-bred Angeleno—he has understood, better than any contemporary author, the importance of consumerism in American life and our modern-day obsession with appearances. Designer names are littered throughout—Polo Ralph Lauren, Armani, Calvin Klein, Gucci, Ray-Ban Wayfarers—almost as asides, as such nonchalance towards wealth was so wholly expected. One New York Times review of the novel put it succinctly: “They spend a truly astonishing amount of time shopping, going to the hairdresser, and worrying about such pressing questions as ‘are my sunglasses crooked?’”
On the whole, fashion is less detached today than it was in Ellis’s L.A., but that doesn’t mean the style he captured isn’t in the midst of an ’80s renaissance. (Well, a second renaissance if you count the Claude Montana shoulders of Marc Jacobs’ fall 2028 collection, the ruched tops of Demna’s spring 2017 collection for Balenciaga, and Anthony Vaccarello’s glitzy party-girl frocks for fall 2018 Saint Laurent.) There’s a little less spandex this time around, but plenty of shrink-wrapped silhouettes: Acne Studios recently showed jeans so tight they looked painted on, while Prada presented its own chartreuse Slenderman. With leather, needle-pointed toes, and jewel-toned boxiness, Saint Laurent has gone all-in on its “louche aristocrat,” as designer Anthony Vaccarello described to Vogue’s Sarah Mower last September. The kindling for ’80s exuberance is all there, now The Shards is poised to light the match.
