The Secret Language of Style in La Piscine

The first thing you notice about La Piscine is the heat.

It hangs over everything: the still water, the long afternoons, the bodies stretched out in various states of undress. Nothing moves quickly. Conversations drift. Time loosens.

On the surface, Jacques Deray's 1969 thriller feels almost weightless: a film in which little seems to happen, beyond a group of beautiful people circling one another around a pool. But beneath the languor, a quiet tension tightens, communicated less through dialogue than through what the characters choose to wear.

Costume, in La Piscine, is never incidental.

Designed by André Courrèges, fresh from a decade under the tutelage of Cristóbal Balenciaga, the wardrobe functions as visual subtext. In a film where the characters spend most of their time undressed, the clothes they do wear take on unusual significance.

Jean-Paul, played by Alain Delon, begins the film in a state of near-total ease. Barefoot, in swim trunks and open shirts, he embodies the hazy freedom of a Riviera summer. There is something almost boyish about him: a comfort that suggests both idleness and a lack of urgency, as if life has softened around him. Even when he wears jeans and a shirt, his bare feet anchor him to the villa's stone floors.

That ease is quickly disrupted by the arrival of Harry, played by Maurice Ronet. Where Jean-Paul is relaxed, Harry is composed. His dark shirts, undone to the navel yet tucked into fitted trousers, project authority. He dresses not for the heat, but in spite of it.

The contrast is more than aesthetic. Harry's sharper, more body-conscious clothes signal wealth, success, and a life defined by structure. Jean-Paul's softer, looser shirts suggest something more tentative: the uncertain position of a struggling writer who has taken an advertising job to get by. Even in small details, the difference holds: Harry prefers long sleeves, rolled with intention, while Jean-Paul is more exposed, more casual, a distinction that runs beneath their relationship, quietly reinforcing a growing imbalance neither man articulates.

As the tension begins to surface, so too does a shift in the way the characters dress. Jean-Paul, once defined by ease, is gradually drawn into structure: shirts stiffen, layers appear, silhouettes sharpen. What begins as a wardrobe built for heat and idleness becomes something more deliberate, more controlled, as though the mounting pressure demands a composure he does not naturally possess.

Harry's presence exposes Jean-Paul's professional and financial shortcomings. But it also forces him into a kind of performance. By degrees, the film moves away from bare skin and towards containment. Dressing becomes a form of defence: a way of managing what can no longer remain unspoken.

This arc is mirrored, subtly, in the women. Romy Schneider's Marianne begins in Courrèges' signature simplicity, clean lines, neutral swimsuits, an uncluttered elegance that signals self-possession. As the atmosphere darkens, her clothes grow more prim: structured dresses appear, vibrant prints give way to sobriety. Jane Birkin's Penelope, by contrast, remains fixed in a gamine preppiness, gingham prints, crocheted cover-ups, flared jeans, her innocence a provocation that the other characters cannot quite name. Each wardrobe becomes a kind of armour, calibrated to its wearer's position in the tightening love triangle.

In one of the film's final frames, Jean-Paul appears suited, Marianne in a sober dress, the two of them nestled by a window, a safe distance from the pool, locked in a shared secret, unable to break free. The transformation is complete.

Revisiting La Piscine now feels particularly timely because its aesthetic cues have resurfaced in contemporary menswear. In what might be called the "Elordi-fication" of style, there is a renewed appetite for quiet luxury and relaxed tailoring. The off-duty wardrobe of Jacob Elordi, effortless but considered, relaxed yet luxurious, echoes the understated philosophy of André Courrèges, who designed the film's costumes half a century ago.

"You don't walk through life anymore. You run. You dance. You drive a car," Courrèges said. "Clothes must be able to move too."

What makes the film especially compelling today, however, is not simply its aesthetic appeal, but the way it frames clothing as a subtle marker of social distinction. In an era when luxury fashion is increasingly defined by restraint rather than overt branding, La Piscine offers a masterclass in how small decisions, the cut of a shirt, the weight of a fabric, the choice to dress up or down in oppressive heat, communicate status, intention, and control.

More than fifty years later, the film continues to find new audiences. On platforms like Letterboxd, viewers debate whether it is hypnotic or frustratingly slow, a testament to its peculiar stillness. That renewed attention makes this an ideal moment to revisit La Piscine from a style perspective, examining how its costume design contributes to the quiet psychological tension beneath its sunlit surface.

The film shows how a few well-chosen clothes can transform an idle summer into something quietly charged with meaning. And it reminds us that style, at its most effective, is never just about appearance, but about what it reveals, and what it conceals.