How to dress like Emma Stone in La La Land

La La Land was the most hyped film of the year, possibly of the decade even. It’s won like a bazillion awards, been nominated for even more and was subject to a bit of an oops moment at the Oscars – #awkward. I saw the trailer in the cinema and immediately decided that it would be the Grease of our generation – the kind of film that you sing along to for years to come and sit your kids down in front of in 20 years’ time and they’ll love it just as much.

The Iconic Yellow Dress

When I finally got to see the film with my friends at the cinema, I wasn’t massively overwhelmed by it. In fact, I was just slightly underwhelmed by it. We didn’t see it until it had already been out for a while and I think the problem was that it had been hyped up SO much that you were only bound to be disappointed by it very slightly. Don’t get me wrong, I thought it was still definitely a really good film and one that I enjoyed watching – I just wish it hadn’t had so much hype beforehand!

There were 2 things that I did really really like about the film: 1. the music. I’ve been playing the soundtrack a little obsessively ever since (swapping only for Beauty and the Beast) and have downloaded sheet music for piano to learn all the tunes. 2. The costumes. And they deserve a paragraph, no wait, a blog post all of their own – and here it is!

Pretty in Pink

When the film started, my friend whispered: “Isn’t it supposed to be set in the 50s?!” to me, and I nodded my head in confusion. Having seen the trailer with the songs, costumes and sets, I’d also assumed it was set somewhere in the retro past. But alas no, it’s set in the present but with a brightly coloured, kitchsy, retro overtone to the whole thing. You can read all the undertones of Hollywood being bright and shiny on the surface and dark and unforgiving to many underneath into that, but I’m going to take the shallow-er route here and just say: Oooh, pretty clothes!

Bright Primary Colours & Matchy Matchy

When I saw the film, we were still in the throes of winter in the UK so it was pretty much a no-go to copying any of the outfits in the film. As we’re coming into summer now, I’ve started pulling out the sundresses and bright colours again. My “look” of the past few years was vintage and pin-up inspired, but I started to move away from that towards the end of last year as I wanted more “grown up” but still on trend. A good option for this is department stores, both on and offline – for example, ASOS, House of Fraser, Debenhams…go for the latest Debenhams voucher codes in 2017 for this. I got rid of a lot of stuff, I mean, a lot. I’m down to about 30 dresses from 150 and I have space (space!!) in my drawers. But now the sun’s come out though, I’m starting to want to find clothes that fit somewhere in between these two styles – I want things that are slightly retro-inspired, that are colourful, but are still classic, timeless but slightly on trend. They’re also low on accessories which is very me too – just give me a dress and shoes any day! I talked in the post I linked to above about how I want clothes that I feel good in and things that make me think “I love this thing!”, and somehow, a lot of the clothes and outfits Emma Stone wore in La La Land screamed all the above at me.

So basically looking at the outfits, you want lots of solid, bright colours, simple silhouettes, fitted and flattering lines, a hint of retro and lots of swishy skirts and dresses you can dance in – sounds good to me!

What do you think of the outfits and clothes I’ve chosen here? Do they feel La La Land to you?