Diane Keaton | She wore her pants, so I may too

A lady in trousers just isn’t typically a mainstream celeb type identification. From the time I made a decision in my early 20s that I might put on loads of pants — for causes starting from rebellious (Western clothes!) to pragmatic (much less waxing) — there have solely been a small pool of heroes to select from. Katharine Hepburn, Audrey Hepburn, and Diane Keaton turned my holy trinity. While the Hepburns had their signature seems — Katharine championed wide-legged pants with button-down Oxford shirts and Audrey selected cigarette/capri pants with ballet flats — Diane Keaton wore her pants each which means. Cropped, wide-legged, boot minimize, skinny, straight, and saggy.

I found Keaton the final, someday in mid-2010s, when her Annie Hall (1977) look turned the inspiration for a trend season. While I solely keep in mind snippets from the movie, her look — swimsuit vests, males’s sneakers, saggy pleated pants, knotted ties, and floppy hats — stays contemporary. As has been endlessly chronicled since, it was a glance that was very a lot Keaton’s personal and it has been hailed as doing as a lot for pants in her time as Marlene Dietrich and Katharine Hepburn earlier than her. This even though it had been round a decade since Yves Saint Laurent had launched the tuxedo and pantsuit for ladies, and over half a century since Coco Chanel and Jean Patou had launched pants for ladies to free them from restrictive clothes.

Women in tailor-made menswear have lengthy been a socially and politically loaded picture. Trousers symbolised male energy and girls who wore them have been accused of being unfeminine. The aura of film star glamour went a way in defending them however even that didn’t totally defend Katharine Hepburn, Greta Garbo, and Marlene Dietrich from the labels. Trousers have been additionally thought-about lesbian coded, whereas carrying full fits an assault on male identification and concurrently a feminist difficulty of giving into male dominance. (This doesn’t apply to denims or observe pants, that are thought-about extra unisex.) Damned when you do, damned when you don’t. The best choice, and one that’s nonetheless adopted, was to solely put on them among the time, to let your self be seen typically sufficient in ‘female’ apparel to offset the masculine.

But Keaton made her identification all in regards to the menswear, proper all the way down to the sneakers. She typically took to the crimson carpet clad in tuxedos, three-piece fits, and spats. In the method, she created an alternate glamour, a model of modest trend, and used each trope of what was unattractive in girls and flipped it on its head. Besides her eclectically layered menswear, the outsized jackets, dangly neckties, layers of sweaters and vests, and cowboy boots, she additionally wore glasses and bowler hats.

The look she created was very a lot her personal, one that might vary from androgynous to asexualised to female. Of course, the truth that there was a historical past of pores and skin most cancers in her household makes her decisions not solely sartorial but additionally sensible. She was herself recognized twice: with basal cell carcinoma at age 21 and squamous cell most cancers a long time later.

While Annie Hall’s androgynous type might need catapulted Keaton to trend fame, it was not one which she caught to all her life. You solely want to take a look at her outfit to the Oscars of 1978, when she gained Best Actress for Annie Hall, to see how quickly she modified it up. She wore a swingy, voluminous mid-calf skirt over straight pants topped with a double breasted Armani blazer — a form of layering that has by no means reached the mainstream and would depart present red-carpet watchers aghast.

In a video on her Instagram, she was seen speaking about how very she was in trend. What’s left unsaid was her willingness to take dangers and take a look at one thing new. Over the years, Keaton’s confirmed off her gray hair, eschewed beauty surgical procedure, and by no means had a stylist. She performed with quantity typically, particularly when carrying skirts or clothes, and he or she did put on them, with as a lot pizzazz as she did trousers. She loved an excellent anti-fit and sometimes layered it with lengthy coats. She blended plaids and pearls, boots and blazers, cravats and massive belts.

The introduction of pants was a method for Chanel to champion consolation and freedom; Katharine Hepburn famously skateboarded in hers, and Diane Keaton, maybe, used that freedom to pursue something that her. Besides being a Hollywood star, she wrote three memoirs, Then Again (2011), Let’s Just Say it Wasn’t Pretty (2014), and Brother & Sister: A Memoir (2020), and printed quite a few pictures books, hers, others, and of discovered images. She pursued pictures, shot a collection of resort interiors for Rolling Stone journal, which then turned the e-book Reservations, printed by Knopf in 1980. The geometry of the black and white images inside finds an echo in her typically monochrome clothes, checks and stripes.

Diane Keaton additionally did up homes, was chargeable for preserving two Frank Lloyd Wright buildings, and printed books about interiors, The House that Pinterest Built (2017) and California Romantica (2007). She adopted two kids in her 50s, launched a music single, and have become an Instagram star.

Over the years, I solely noticed Keaton on Pinterest and generally on crimson carpets, and was at all times struck by her real curiosity in trend and placing garments collectively. You can see when somebody is having enjoyable; not caring about at all times getting it proper. That was Keaton’s greatest present to me and her many followers, to benefit from the technique of dressing up, to experiment, and never care if it at all times lands.

In her e-book, Fashion First (2024), she says, ‘I needed my garments to scream, Hey! Look! Look over right here!’ however, maybe, this was the one factor she was unsuccessful at — sure, individuals checked out her and admired her garments and magnificence, however solely as a result of they have been a part of her, not as a result of they have been garments that screamed for consideration. She wore them, they didn’t put on her.

The author is a trend commentator and writer.