In making Tenue de soirée (1986), director Bertrand Blier sought to recreate the atmosphere of Les Valseuses (1974), with its self-proclaimed and acknowledged iconoclasm. Originally titled Rimmel, this story of a love triangle once again affirms the filmmaker’s taste for provocation. Gainsbourg quickly became the obvious choice for the music, but the composer who had already created the music for Si j’étais un espion, Blier’s first feature film, had nevertheless refused to compose Les Valseuses. Following on from his album Love on the Beat, which had just been released and on the cover of which Gainsbourg appears in drag and make-up, the work on Tenue de soirée seemed natural. For Serge Gainsbourg, cinema always represented a site of experimentation allowing him to create or recreate/recycle musical themes, with the help of his arrangers. The score for Tenue de soirée is no exception to the rule, marked by transtextual references that still manage to construct a veritable musical staging of this film and of the transformation of its main character.