Accidental Wes Anderson

Submission 9,596

Part of a series on Wes Anderson. [View Related Entries]

About

Accidental Wes Anderson is a series of photographs that display a similar aesthetic to that of motion picture director Wes Anderson, such as spatial symmetry, vibrant colors and classical architecture.

Origin

The earliest known example of a grouping of phoographs that resemble the work of Wes Anderson is the "subreddit"/memes/sites/reddit/ /r/AccidentalWesAnderson, which launched on April 27th, 2018 by Redditor^[1] simonsarris.

Precursor

Prior to the subreddit, people online would refer to wardrobe and color choices as "Accidental Wes Anderson." On March 3rd, 2015, Instagram ^[2] user @scottandmel posted an image of a man wearing a red hat, much like the kind found in the Wes Anderson film The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. He captioned the photo "Accidental Wes Anderson wardrobe."

Spread

A little over one month later, the Instagram^[3] account @accidentallywesanderson posted its first image, "Rungrado 1st of May Stadium | North Korea | c. 1989." The post (shown below, left) received more than 630 likes in less than one year.

Two days later, the account^[4] posted an image of Hotel Belvédère in Grindewald, Switzerland, which resembles the hotel from the Anderson film The Grand Budapest Hotel. Within one year, the post received more than 900 likes.

Later that year, on September 20th, Twitter ^[5] user @burberrywaffle posted a series of Accidental Wes Anderson photographs with the caption, "'accidental wes anderson' is by far my favorite aesthetic." The post (shown below, right) received more than 7,400 retweets and 19,000 likes in eight months.

On December 19th, 2017, Redditor mugwortlemon published an image of six people wearing different color snowsuits hiking across a snowy tundra. The post (shown below) was titled "The Life Antarctic with Alex Honnold" and received more than 31,000 points (95% upvoted) and 180 comments in less than six months.