Films To Inspire Your Summer Style: The Talented Mr Ripley

Photo: Paramount/Everett/REX/Shutterstock.

Marge Sherwood. The second best-dressed Marge in pop-culture history. Fact.

If you're not familiar with the name, chances are you haven't watched the exquisite film, The Talented Mr Ripley, starring a young Gwyneth Paltrow as Marge Sherwood. Directed by Anthony Minghella, the 1999 film was adapted from Patricia Highsmith's 1955 novel of the same name. Gwynnie stars alongside a devilishly dishy Jude Law as trust-fund baby Dickie Greenleaf, and a sinisterly messed-up Matt Damon as the shape-shifting Tom Ripley in a story about mental and physical violence within the depths of unrequited love. It is a chilling journey through Italy's Ischia with a cat's cradle murder-mystery plot, but the main focus does, at several moments, give way to a truly phenomenal Mediterranean-chic wardrobe.

Actually, come to think of it, the entire plot hangs on a single garment – the Princeton blazer – that Tom Ripley steals in order to be mistaken for an old Princeton pal of the super wealthy Dickie Greenleaf. It is a mistake Tom purposefully negates to correct after Dickie's father offers to pay for him to visit Italy and return his rogue son to the States. And so begins Tom's journey into living as a member of the other half, with inky evenings wasted at jazz clubs, sizzling afternoons squandered on yachts and long, drunk lunches on the terrace.

It's the Oscar-nominated blue-blood wardrobe designed by Gary Jones and Ann Roth that steals these languid summer scenes. Gwyneth's role as the elegant, all American girl-abroad, Marge, has produced an archive of signet rings; alice-bands, knotted-shirts, leopard print pill box hats, linen buttoned skirts and '50s swimwear. Here we take a look at why Marge has become one of the most feted cinematic style icons.