We miss him. A lot. But we’re not going to start listing all the reasons why, because, frankly, where do you even begin? And, even if we did, it’d feel too small for someone like David Lynch. It’s been two days since February 24 (when Agent Dale Cooper entered the town of Twin Peaks), and we decided to use that as an excuse to enter the Lynchiverse from a female perspective.
So here’s our personal selection of the most iconic, mysterious, and just downright captivating women from his films. We’re talking personality, we’re talking style (because their looks are just as unforgettable as their stories), and we hope this little Lynch-inspired lineup leaves you with something to think about, and why not some styling ideas, too.
RENEE MADISON OR ALICE WAKEFIELD IN LOST HIGHWAY
So, Renee Madison, who is also Alice Wakefield, which is to say, she is two different women, or maybe she is the same woman twice, or maybe she is no woman at all, but an idea of a woman filtered through David Lynch’s dream-logic haze, is the main antagonist in Lost Highway. If you’ve seen it, you know.
First, she is Renee, the eerie, smoldering wife of Fred Madison, a saxophonist who might be losing his mind (or already has). She is all Old Hollywood face and very 90s styling: slip dresses and co-ording sets in shades of burgundy and brown, a coquette-ish little set of baby bangs, dark lips, dark nail polish, smokey eyes.
Then, she is Alice Wakefield, who is somehow even more hypnotic. She’s a blonde bombshell in satin mini dresses and platforms, whose mere presence suggests bad things will happen and that she might even enjoy them.
Her bangs remain, now platinum, and her nail polish becomes metallic. Her most iconic scene sees her held at gunpoint, performing a seductive striptease for Mr Eddy, to the killer soundtrack – ‘I Put A Spell on You’. Her saucey act leaves her wearing nothing but platforms and a slick of red lipstick for all to see.
Renee is Alice, Alice is Renee, neither are real, but both are so real that you can’t look away.
RITA IN MULHOLLAND DRIVE
Rita is the quintessential Lynchian enigma; beautiful, broken, and barely holding onto her sense of self. She borrows her name from a poster of Rita Hayworth, and she’s all dressed up with somewhere to go and an attitude to match.
She emerges from a car crash in Mulholland Drive as an amnesiac draped in noir glamour: burgundy lips, slinky black dress, a DKNY bag stuffed with cash, a blue key and questions. Things that don’t belong to her. Maybe they never did. She’s all desire and confusion, Hollywood allure with no recollection of how she got there. Sexuality clings to her like perfume, intoxicating but not quite hers. Stripping down (literally and figuratively), she sheds her identity, slipping into something softer, more vulnerable. And then comes the blonde wig which seals her transformation; docile, lost, a woman rewritten.
PERDITA DURANGO IN WILD AT HEART
Bow down at the altar of Isabella Rossellini as Perdita Durango; a peroxide-blonde vision of pure chaos. She’s Sailor Ripley’s old friend, but more importantly, she’s the kind of woman who easily shakes hands with the devil.
Her look is iconic: spliced black dresses and corset-laced leotards make for a character who oozes originality and sex-appeal. While there's plenty to love about Perdita's look – that lattice-leather crop top, that bleached hair teeters on the edge of yellow (in a way that somehow makes it cooler?), the single dagger earring – we can't take our eyes off her thick, dark brows.
SHELLY JOHNSON IN TWIN PEAKS
According to Stella, Shelly is the most beautiful woman in Twin Peaks, and even David Lynch seems to agree, if we go by that iconic moment when Gordon Cole visits the RR Diner and falls for both the cherry pie and Shelly in one fell swoop. She’s all angel face and perfectly curled hair, the kind of beauty that feels completely effortless. As a waitress at the Double R, she looks the part, right down to her perfectly starched blue uniform and cheerful demeanor. Outside the diner, she leans into ‘90s small-town cool: plaid jackets, lace shirts, turtlenecks, and hairbands.
LULA PACE FORTUNE IN WILD AT HEART
Lula has a rough ride in Wild at Heart, but she gets her happy ending and looks incredibly good doing it. The whole world is, after all, wild at heart and weird on top.
Her style is like a roadmap of the mayhem she endures. Body-con everything: tight black dresses, lace leggings, bralettes that feel more like a dare than a top. Her hair, loosely crimped, like she just tumbled out of a convertible (because she probably did). A leather jacket slung over one shoulder, a slick of red lipstick, matching nails, and a pair of red stilettos.
JOSIE PACKARD IN TWIN PEAKS
Josie Packard, the mysterious owner of the town mill, is enigmatic to the core. Is she a damsel in distress or a master manipulator? Hard to say. That’s the beauty of her character, she exists in the in-between, slipping through the cracks like smoke.
Her look is late '80s / early '90s sculpted perfection. Sharp black bob, matte brown smokey eye with razor-thin eyeliner, red glossy lips. Fashion, for Josie, is both a statement and a shield—oversized furs, chunky grandma-knit cardigans, silk kimonos that hang just right in the dim glow of a bedside lamp.
She was a Twin Peaks main character, until she wasn’t. The story turned her into a doorknob. (Metaphor? Curse? Who even knows? In Twin Peaks, anything goes.)
LADY JESSICA IN DUNE
The leading woman in an epic scale film, Lady Jessica lives on a third planet. The desert planet, home to dune dwellers with piercing blue eyes. Her style is a mash-up of Elizabethan costume and sci-fi space cadet hardwear, as bizarre as that may sound. A look which screams ‘galactic Queen’, if there ever were one.
AUDREY HORNE IN TWIN PEAKS
Audrey Horne was born bored. A rich troublemaker in a town too small for her ambitions, she treats life like a game that she intends to win, preferably in red lipstick, black eyeliner and high heels. Her entrance says it all: slipping into a chauffeur-driven car, arriving at school, swapping saddle shoes for red pumps at her locker. Her signature look —a tight sweater (often her own), knee-length plaid skirts, and a knowing smirk— turns the 1950s ingénue into something sharper, more unpredictable.
She flirts, schemes, and bends the world to her will, but when trouble calls, Audrey answers. Infatuated with Agent Cooper and trying desperately to help him, she trades the prep schoolgirl plaids, for the One Eyed Jack’s black silk, lace, and plunging necklines, slipping into the required role of a Lynchian femme fatale without losing her edge.
DOROTHY VALLENS IN BLUE VELVET
Dorothy Vallens is one of Lynch’s most complex and unforgettable characters. A beguiling nightclub singer, and devastatingly self-destructive femme fatale whose beauty is both her singular means of empowerment and her downfall.
When we meet her, she’s draped in a red silk robe, alongside a voluminous brown wig, red lips, blue eyeshadow; a look that hovers between classic glamour and something slightly off. On stage, she’s untouchable in a revealing black lace dress that accentuates her curves, before changing into a black halterneck evening gown covered in sequins and pearl earrings sparkling under the spotlight.
But back in her apartment, stripped to lingerie and a blue velvet robe, the illusion fractures. She is not meant to be sexy here, just exposed. Blue and red define her, the contrast between desire and danger, beauty and control slipping through her fingers.
LAURA PALMER IN TWIN PEAKS
Saving the best for last, like the cherry on top of a damn fine cherry pie. Laura Palmer.
What isn’t there to say about her? The Homecoming Queen and town sweetheart whose death unraveled every secret in Twin Peaks. From the outside, she’s all sunshine and prom-night perfection, but underneath.. A cocaine-snorting, brothel-working, self-destructive force of nature. A girl who knew too much, felt too much, and paid the price for it.
Her style tells the whole story if you know where to look. The brown cardigan and plaid skirt for sneaking cigarettes and scrawling in her secret diary. The mini black dress for the nights she didn’t come home. The oversized sweater and vacant stare of a girl barely keeping it together in the high school bathroom. And then, of course, the looks that aren’t just iconic, but burned into TV history: Laura wrapped in plastic. Laura in the Black Lodge, wearing that midnight-blue dress with the brooch at her bust.
Her famous last words to Agent Cooper? “I’ll see you again in 25 years.” And she did. We did. First in the much-anticipated third season, and now—one more time, in the picture below.
Guess who is the real Laura?