From the beginibg, since 1930s and early ’40s, a cinema have had great influence for fashion and its new ideas. Many designers are acknowledged the impact of film costumes on their work and not only designers. Have you ever not dreamt to look like Meryl Streep in the famous The Devil Wears Prada or charming Marilyn Monroe in the classical Some Like It Hot ?

Anyway the mutual influence movie and life has deep history. For instance the most characteristic fashion trend of the World War period is attention at the shoulder, with butterfly sleeves and banjo sleeves, and exaggerated shoulder pads for both men and women by the 1940s. And Lana Turner’s in 1937 film They Won’t Forget made her the first Sweater girl, an informal look for young women relying on large breasts pushed up and out by brassieres, which continued to be influential into the 1950s, and was arguably the first major style of youth fashion.

But some fashion brands require more than just a token screen appearance for their hefty contribution to the budget, sometimes to unedifying effect, as anyone knows who sat through the cringe-making “Are you wearing a Rolex?” “Omega, actually” exchange in – again – Casino Royale. Tag Heuer has been paying to get its watches featured in films since the 1970s. In an interview last year, the watch company’s president, Jean-Christophe Babin, said, “Usually we specify one close-up and/or a verbal mention. We tend to select scripts in which the watch itself, or the notion of time in general, play an important part.”

That explains why the company spent money on last year’s paralysingly dreary 88 Minutes, starring Al Pacino. The migraine-inducing Nike-namedropping in Run Fatboy Run turned an already dull film into little more than a dull advertisement.

It is this kind of thing, along with the idea that it is a crafty form of subliminal advertising, that has given product placement such a bad name and is undoubtedly the reason Marc Jacobs, speaking from the Vuitton offices in Paris, is so keen to insist that his alliance with The Darjeeling Limited is “definitely not some sort of product placement so I wasn’t worried that we would be somehow tainted by doing this”.

In this instance, no money changed hands between Vuitton and the filmmakers. Jacobs provided the bags free and, unless you study the credits, you wouldn’t know that the bags are by the company. Instead of the obvious LV monogram, Anderson’s brother has drawn whimsical motifs on the bags and the director even gives the maker of the luggage a fictional name. The bags are there purely to serve the look of the movie, as opposed to bringing advertising money to the film budget and promote a baggage line. “It’s not so much that I avoid product placement, it’s that it’s never really happened for me,” says Anderson, laughing. “Like in The Royal Tenenbaums there were loads of labels, such as Fila, Lacoste, Adidas and so on, but we never got a nickel from anyone. Maybe we haven’t learned how to approach people properly …”