Goddard—the director to whom the brand Band of Outsiders owes its namesake—is one of the most iconic directors of the French New Wave. Like all of his films, Pierrot Le Fou mirrors the social issues of the time and place it was made. Shooting in France at the end of the 1960s, Goddard uses discontinuous and fragmented editing, bold visual styling and long takes to produce a film with a feeling of realism, which he interlaces with essay-like authorial dialogue. The film functions as a critique of conservative cinematic and social paradigms.

The protagonist, Ferdinand, played by the charismatic Jean-Paul Belmondo, is a young intellectual living a dull conformist life with his wealthy wife. Throughout most of the film he remains in the first outfit he is shown in: a grey glen check suit with a white shirt and red tie. Even in its first appearance in Ferdinand’s bourgeois-family home, the suit is effortless and cool, with sartorial lines that sit somewhere between the sleek sensuous tailoring of Saint Laurent and forward-thinking masculine form of Thom Browne’s suits. While the “man in the gray suit” implies some level of mid-century conformity, Ferdinand’s outfit suggests someone that is out of step with their surroundings.

Ferdinand, feeling the languor of his uninteresting lifestyle runs off with the family’s babysitter (and Ferdinand’s ex-girlfriend) Marianne (Anna Karina) who herself is fleeing from a group of gunrunners. Their escapade mixes the excitement and danger of Bonnie and Clyde (1967) with the existential and social examination, for which Goddard is best known. As the film moves on the styling of Ferdinand’s suit becomes more louche and is at its best when paired with a bold red shirt that he wears half-untucked with careless ease. The half-untucked dress shirt—a style that can also been seen in Balenciaga’s most recent campaigns–subverts the intended signification of the dress shirt, normally associated with orderly professionalism, and recodes it as a rejection of that very orderliness. A brand that manages to reject many of the pre-established codes of fashion—Prada—has used the film (and its contemporaries in the “French New Wave”) in previous campaigns as well, notably, during it’s Fall/Winter 2013 season. Ferdinand cannot fully escape his bourgeois lifestyle, but he can show his aversion to it through this subtle, personal act of dissent.

This manoeuvre of flipping the intended meaning of objects can also be seen in the work of directors that Goddard has influenced. A notable example is the costume of Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976), who, like Ferdinand, also self-consciously marginalizes himself from society. Bickle’s iconic Vietnam-era M-65 jacket references the American soldier at war, extending his wartime mentality, distortion and disillusionment back into the homefront. In the seedy 1970s New York City setting the jacket is a reminder that the literal wartime frontier is over but the aftermath has created crazed men like Bickle who are uncertain of where to direct their anger. The military uniform—or in Pierrot Le Fou’s case, the working man’s suit—can quickly take on new meaning when placed out of context, even being made into a critique of itself.

Claire Denis’ Beau Travail demonstrates that even in its intended context, clothing, specifically the military uniform, can take on unintended meaning. Denis’ characters are French Foreign Legion soldiers, enlisted with the Legion’s promise of civil redemption through the practice of a strict military regime of self-abnegation. Placed in the vast, sun-blanched landscape of Djibouti, the characters spend their time adhering to a strict routine of exercise and subordination to their Sergeant (Denis Lavant). The men are often shown topless, demonstrating how the uniform is arbitrary once bodies themselves become uniformed through strictly synchronised movement.

The sun-bleached military greens, woollen socks, aged-looking cotton T-shirts and cargo pants are often off the body when the soldiers adhere to the military routine. Shots of the young men meticulously laboring over their uniforms; hand-washing them, hanging them to dry and ironing them with precision function serves as a reminder of the high level of attention and labor that is required to not only maintain these supposedly utilitarian garments, but also to engineer them. Such meticulous care gives you an appreciation for the level of research and engineering carried out by brands committed to reproducing these service garments including The Real McCoys, Buzz Ricksons, Wtaps.

In Beau Travail, although the military uniforms are in their intended context, they take on new meaning when the soldiers perform different identities through the act of dancing at a club that they visit during their time off. On the dance floor their movement is highly personal and sensuous as opposed to being ordered and controlled by the codes of strict military regime. Their performance of a different persona gives the military uniform a new significance, which is in opposition to its intended purpose.

As the film progresses, a young legionnaire, Gilles Sentain, played by Grégoire Colin, chooses to dissent from his Sergeant’s orders. After disobeying the Sergeant, Sentain is cruelly punished; left in the desert to die, both his body and his uniform merge with the environment, becoming encrusted with salt and sand. Here we see that when his military uniform achieves its intended function—camouflaging body and environment—it is in accordance with the forced renunciation of the wearer’s individual personality.

In the final scene, Denis demonstrates that for some people, the military uniform is a form of body surveillance that cannot be subverted. When the shamed Sergeant, who is dismissed for subjecting Sentain to brutality, is finally relinquished from the uniform of the Legion he performs a spectacular dance routine, wearing a dark, lustrous open collar shirt (that looks like it could be from Tom Ford’s time at Gucci), a loose-fitting pair of black trousers and black and white wingtips—typical club attire for the time and the character’s age. The final scene acts as a reminder that clothing carries multiple meanings that can be disrupted, changed or conformed to by the actions of the individual wearer.

In La Haine rebellion against the status quo of the uniform and social dress standards has already taken place. The three protagonists; Vinz (Vincent Cassel), Hubert (Hubert Koundé), and Saïd (Saïd Taghmaoui), are youths living at the margins of Parisian society in a pauperized housing project. They face a confluence of forces that are present in both Pierrot Le Fou and Beau Travail—mainly a fusion of societal disillusionment and an aversion to authority. As they pass their time aimlessly they are subject to both the monotony that Ferdinand in Pierrot Le Fou tries to flee and the military brutality (but in this case, from the Paris police) that Beau Travail’s Sentain faces.

In the aftermath of their friend being beaten by the police, each of the protagonists takes a different stance. Vince, set on revenge, maniacally rehearses Travis Bickle’s infamous Taxi Driver lines, “You talkin’ to me?”. The more mature Hubert, a boxer and gym owner whose gym was burned in a riot, sees the problem of police violence as systemic and wishes to escape his surroundings. Lastly, Saïd inhabits a middle ground and at times attempts to play diplomat between his two friends.

La Haine uses branding and style to establish group identity. Sporting brands tie the group’s style together. Vince wears a classic Nike track jacket paired with Levis, an MA-1 bomber and white trainers; Hubert naturally dons an Everlast T-shirt with US military camouflage cargos, a Carhartt beanie and classic Reebok trainers; Saïd remains in a Sergio Tacchini tennis tracksuit (reminiscent of those that were made in collaboration with Gosha Rubchinskiy). Living their lives on and around the gritty streets of mid-’90s Paris, the sportswear-heavy aesthetic that ruled the era (and is reflected in our contemporary style conversation) takes center stage throughout.

On the brink of crisis, the group’s wardrobe is defiant, however, faced with their present inability to escape the violence of their social environment, clothing is a way of rejecting the environmental forces from which they cannot break away. References (especially in their clothing choices) to activities and influences from elsewhere serve as a renunciation of and a desire to escape the confines of their environment. Additionally, when they do venture out of their impoverished suburb to a trendy Parisian gallery opening they self-consciously place themselves in opposition to the standards of dress that are expected for them to move amongst artworld social elites—a brief moment of playful rebellion.

The mix of soccer, tennis, hip-hop and military influences suggests a blurring of subcultural codes and a specific Parisian interpretation of globalization. The film demonstrates that like uniforms, brands too can take on new meaning. This implies that fashion is participatory, rather than a brand’s designer dictating meaning, it is the wearers who have the final control over how clothes interact with the social environment and are interpreted.

In all three films clothing is used to articulate an antagonistic position towards the social and political mood of the time. While none of the characters in these films successfully overturn the faults in their environment, their choice of attire is a personal rebellion against the conformity of the status quo. It signals the possibility that small acts of dissent can take on individual meaning. While designers—some more successfully than others—try and siphon the potency of the romantic notion of the rebellious youth, it is the wearer who decides upon whether their choice to dress a certain way is an act of conformity, compliance or critique.