There's something about good film merch that makes me want to spend my hard-earned cash with no inhibitions. Especially when it features a niche, IYKYK reference.
A couple of weeks ago, as I was trying to locate my seat in the rows of the Hackney Empire theatre, I spotted a new favourite. Worn by a mysterious person running around and looking important while balancing three phones in their hand, it was a basic white tee that simply read: ‘Written, Directed & Produced by Lena Dunham’. It wasn't a surprising spot – after all, I was at one of Lena Dunham's in-conversation event celebrating her new memoir, Famesick – but it was one that I instantly coveted. So I did the same thing I always do when spotting something fab out inthe wild: snap a sneaky, blurry photo and add it to my wishlist folder. It took only a quick Google search to figure out the provenance of the design and its originator – an unofficial merch brand with hyper-specific references that celebrates cult women of the film and TV industries. Introducing, misc-en-scène.
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'I released a collection of apparel in Lena Dunham's honour in 2024, which brought us together, and that has led me to so many other dream projects, including programming a series at Roxy Cinema in NYC this last January,' says Margot Stacy, the founder of misc-en-scène, over email. Based in Texas, Stacy first came up with the idea for the brand in 2016 when she met director Steven Soderbergh at a test screening for his feature Logan Lucky. Soderbergh was wearing a shirt with “A Film by Mike Nichols” printed on the front. ‘Then I got the idea to design a T-shirt featuring Elaine May, Nichols’ brilliant comedy partner in the 50s and 60s,’ she explains, citing the honorary Academy Award recipient as a key influence for millennial comedians, including Dunham and Mindy Kaling. Stacy created a design based on the title credits of May's film Mikey and Nicky, funded the project via Kickstarter and screen-printed a batch of shirts that ended up selling out.
The success of the first tee launched Stacy into a side-career as a film merch designer. ‘The goal was to highlight and amplify cinema that had often gone overlooked, especially works by women and gay and trans filmmakers. A Barbara Loden tee followed, then one in honour of Kathleen Collins, and from there the store took off.' While talking about her own mission, Stacy also notes the importance of fellow DIY, fan-made merch brands including Super Yaki, Girls On Tops, and Online Ceramics. ‘We were people who grew up on pirated films, video stores, and YouTube. My cinema education was very DIY, and online pockets of movie buffs on Twitter and Instagram were the grounds for us to develop our own taste and canon.’ There's also the fact that Stacy used to be a film critic, which led her to deeper obsessions, like scouring eBay and other auction sites for cinema paraphernalia that's often left behind.
Over the years, misc-en-scène has taken Stacey on the road to becoming a taste-making curator of cinematic history captured through a female lens that connects different generations. There's a T-shirt featuring Isabelle Huppert in The Piano Teacher (one of the brand's biggest hits), and then there's a whole collection dedicated to Gen Z icon, Anora actor and internet troll Ivy Wolk. Another favourite is Stacy's ‘Lydia Tár Innocent’ top, hailing back to Cate Blanchett's 2022 role as a problematic lesbian. ‘That one became a meme quickly, even St. Vincent bought one and wore it to her orchestra sessions last year,’ she says. Though there isn't a specific recipe to designing a successful piece of misc-en-scène, Stacey likes to define her best ideas as the perfect balance of off-putting, funny, vulgar and controversial. 'I like my shirts to be conversation starters, places of discovery themselves. Or I have a collection of Gwyneth Paltrow aphorisms re-designed as Jenny Holzer quotes. It's culture folding in on itself.’
Though it's an industry that appears to be somewhat obsessed with copyright protection (except when it comes to AI), Stacey proudly declares that misc-en-scène has been unscathed by the usage of imagery, quotes and other creative properties. Well, almost. ‘I have only had one cease and desist letter and that was from Rosalie Varda.' Though costume designer and daughter of iconic French filmmaker Agnès Varda might not appreciate it, misc-en-scène plays an important role in keeping archival work alive and celebrated by people who otherwise might not stumble into that corner of film history. 'It is all an act of visibility! If any studio or filmmaker has a problem with that, they don’t [do anything] because they understand they’d be cutting off their nose to spite their face. Cinema merch is for the people, often more accessible than even the films are.'
One of misc-en-scène's collections is dedicated to filmmaker Todd Solonz, a critical indie darling and the brain behind Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995), Happines (1998) and Wiener Dog (2016). ‘It’s one of my most popular collections. Meanwhile, Solonz can’t even get his next film funded. It’s a hard world we live in, and my hope is that if people plaster themselves with images or derivations of them from his films, maybe there’s a way we can get his work made again. That goes for all the cinema freaks who want to make lasting images.'
Early on in the world of misc-en-scène (initially named tees-en-scène and rebranded after the COVID lockdown), it was imperative for Stacy to share all of the profits from the company to marginalised filmmakers, activists and mutual aid groups. ‘Now it funds my life because I’m a broke trans woman,’ she jokingly shares. But the driving force is more than just financial success – it's her connection with cinema which was instrumental in building her own identity that she's eager to bring to you, too. ‘My love is cinema: I wouldn’t be Margot without it. It was crucial to my transition as a transsexual woman, and I find my archival prerogative is parallel to me finally understanding who I was in the world. […] If I feel I have good taste and understand the power of discovery, then I want to share that with others. That mission is in the images I choose to share or the clothes I make for people to wear, give as gifts, wipe their faces or cum with. The value of cinema is that it shapes and permeates everything.’
