The fashion industry has always seemed to exist on its own planet. Historically, it’s been regarded as this rarefied, impenetrable bubble. Because of this, filmmakers have long been attracted to its cliquish glitz and elite cultural cachet, with countless attempts to synthesise the fashion world into movies.

These are films that understand fashion innately. Films that know fashion doesn’t actually exist in a vacuum: it influences and guides our lives on a daily basis. A good fashion film, whether narrative or nonfiction, requires not just impressive aesthetics; it needs to possess the same critical eye that so many of the designers apply to their work. Crucially, a fashion film has to have a point of view.

For the purposes of this starter pack, we’re considering films about fashion, as opposed to films that simply offer excellent costume design. These are films, presented chronologically, that have helped audiences reevaluate the industry; that have fed back into fashion and influenced it; that tug at preconceptions; that, in some cases, downright despise it; that ultimately lift the curtain on the world’s most glamorous sausage factory.

Read the full breakdown of titles from Patrick Sproull over on Journal.