Holiday films with fashion cred

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Flapper dresses and cloche hats. Leather jackets and cargo pants. Three-piece suits and vintage eyeglasses.

Sounds like a list of looks included in a history of fashion, but during this season it’s part of the visual spectacle of holiday films.

“The Artist” and “Hugo” are set in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the beginning of the modern age of fashion, when women embraced a certain kind of liberation with shorter hemlines and even shorter hair.

The goth-punk heroine of the “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” is styled in distressed leather and fleece hoodies.

The hero of “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” dons a 1950s suit and vintage spectacles, just one example of the subtle way a man’s style can show something about his character.

At the end of 2011, first-run movies are full of fashion statements and subtle style cues. The Image staff gives a guided tour of some of the memorable looks onscreen this holiday season, in films including those above plus ‘W.E.,’ whose costume designer Arianne Phillips talks about recreating the wardrobes of Wallis Simpson and England’s King Edward VIII. And more!

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-- Alice Short