Films To Inspire Your Summer Style: Almost Famous

Most women don't need an excuse to crush on Kate Hudson. For starters, her ma is Goldie Hawn. For seconds, How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days. For dessert, she dates rock stars, dumps them, stays friends with them, basically lives on a beach with her adorable children and parties all night with her girlfriends. And don't forget those abs.

On top of all of this, her part as the fictional Penny Lane (based on Bebe Buell) in Cameron Crowe's 2000 film, Almost Famous is one of our favourite cinematic roles of all time, not least for Penny's mad-cool '70s get-up (cheesecloth smocks and embroidered booties with crushed velvet and mid-blue denim).

Penny was styled on '70s Playboy-girl, model and roadie Bebe Buell, who dated every frontman, was best friends with Patti Smith, and is Liv Tyler's mother. Buell is a real life friend of Crowe's, and in an interview with Elle, in 2012, Buell said this of the film: "I saw so much of myself and my life and so much of what really did happen. Cameron and I really were friends, we really were the babies on the tour."

"I think Cameron showed his love of women in that movie," she added."One of the things that he tried to show about the Penny Lane character is that she was really more rock 'n' roll than the band and I thank him for that. The part of her that was me, he captured ... dead-on."

Part of the reason we all love the character of Penny is for her humanity. She's a small town girl, born under the name Lady Goodman, who escapes the suburbs, reimagines herself and makes even the hardiest of rock-star love rats fall under her spell. It's this transformation which is entirely aided by her incredible wardrobe that captures the audience, during the arc of Penny's rise and fall. The costume designer, Betsy Heimann, who worked on other seminal films Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs, designed the now famous shaggy coat that Penny wears for a large part of the film. Speaking to Elle, Heimann explained that the shearling coat is her armour; this coat is her protection; and when she puts this coat on, she's wrapped in her cocoon of glamorous, wonderful Band Aids. She becomes Penny Lane, you know?"

Here are all Penny's best looks...