John Galliano and the best movies about fashion

For those who lament the inequities of “destroying culture”, the career of British fashion designer John Galliano is a useful counterpoint. Appointed in 2011 as creative director of Christian Dior after a horrific incident of anti-Semitic abuse on his part, he spent two years in the desert before being hired by Oscar de la Renta and then Maison Margiela, where he has been for ten years. A-listers are still wearing his gowns on red carpets. Life goes on. Documentary Kevin Macdonald High & Low: John Galliano (broadcast on Mubi from 26 April) chronicles the rise and fall and rise of Galliano with a look further back than you might expect from a film co-produced by Vogue publisher Condé Nast. There is a proper understanding of his distinctive design sensibility, but a close scrutiny of personal flaws enabled by an unruly, permissive industry.

Because of its joy and capacity for misbehavior, the rag trade is always a great film subject: the clothes dazzle the scene and the volatile business is all the drama. Macdonald’s film is the latest in a series of recent fine fashion documentaries: the masterpieces of Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui McQueen it told the far more tragic story of Alexander McQueen, the infamous industry tycoon, with a formal flare that matched his unusual aesthetic and humane reflection on his demons. Frédéric Tcheng on Dior and me less burdened with pathos in its brilliant overview of designer Raf Simons’ debut season for the French fashion house, but powerful in its detailing of the creative process. The same film maker also did Halstona compellingly framed portrait of the American disco-era designer, who went from ubiquitous salesman to salesman by the time of his AIDS-related death in 1990.

The French have a strange habit of making biopics of their most famous fashion icons in near-simultaneous pairs: in 2009 we got two Coco Chanel dramas, with the business people, directed by Audrey Tautou. Coco before Chanel focused more on the work of the subject than on what is fondly imagined, extremely romantic Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky, with Mads Mikkelsen smoldering as the alleged lover of the equally famous Chanel. Five years later it happened again. With Pierre Niney presiding over the César award, Yves Saint Laurent it provided a fluent overview of the innovator’s career and key relationships, but a few months later Bertrand Bonello was brighter, taller. San Lawrence which took his wild sensual energy. Strange, then, that the latter cannot be found streaming in the UK, although the DVD is worth buying. In all four films there is a reverence for the clothes themselves that you would expect from French filmmakers. Certainly, Ridley Scott didn’t seem to be paying much attention to the couture aspect of his handsome gray biography. House of Gucci; the murderous melodrama behind the label is where the film takes place.

It’s a tough satire industry. permanent crowder, The Devil Wears Prada She doesn’t exaggerate the harshness of the fashion-mag world, but her high-minded heroine cannily calls out her contempt above all else for the entire industry—at least before she sentimentally tries to have it both ways. Despite an amazing all-star cast, Robert Altman is very busy but very boring Profêt-à-Porter The business couldn’t beat its own farcical game, but Ben Stiller has the goofy male model Zoolander finding the right balance between willful stupidity and recognizable truth. In contrast, the candy-bright music, Gershwin-score Funny Face fantasy offers pure, sensual desire satisfaction in its portrait of high-fashion modeling – starting with Audrey Hepburn’s treacherous opening position as a bookish frump.

Nicolas Winding Refn is underrated The Neon Demon cleverly embraced the extremes of catwalk modeling and the physical demands it posed as a basis for truly grotesque body horror. A very different horror film, an Olivier Assayas film Personal Shopper he used the cool, aloof nature of the celebrity styling business as the perfect backdrop for a chilling ghost story, clothing that occasionally allows Kristen Stewart’s haunted heroine to escape the body. Meanwhile, the Disney prequel Cruella it gave the pelt-poaching villain an appropriate backstory making her a vampy fashion maven: it’s not quite dark, but the frocks are great.

In terms of total divadom, she can hardly outshine Daniel Day-Lewis’s middle-aged London couturier in Paul Thomas Anderson’s cellless romantic drama. Phantom thread, one of the best movies about the muse-artist battle. The curious Diana Ross 1975 vehicle MahoganyMeanwhile, it proves just how difficult it is to make a sympathetic protagonist out of a fashion designer: Ross’s heroine hustles and grinds and cries her way to the top, but we only have eyes for her incredible cafes.

All titles widely available for rental or purchase unless otherwise specified.

Also new on streaming and DVD this week

Last summer
(BFI Player)
Bypassing cinemas and being released exclusively to the BFI Player, the first film in ten years from French provocateur Catherine Breillat was one of the truly terrifying pleasures of last year’s Cannes festival. Remake and improvement of the 2019 Danish film Queen of Hearts, the excellent Léa Drucker stars as a well-to-do middle-aged lawyer who compromises her family and social standing for a reckless relationship with her teenage stepson. The tabloid sound emerges as a tart, rough and very funny examination of women’s sexuality and the social standards that bind it.

The Three Musketeers: Milady
(Apple TV+)
This French revival of the old Dumas saga continues to be – in its second installment – ​​a total breach of boundaries in the old-school swashbuckler mode, unscathed by clever postmodern irony. Beautifully set and beautifully cast, it almost makes you hope for an ongoing franchise.

Akira Kurosawa’s dream
(Criterion Collection)
Criterion’s typically sparkling Blu-ray release of this 1990 work by Kurosawa, an eccentric but occasionally charming patchwork of eight vignettes plucked from the subconscious of the then-elderly – including an encounter with Vincent van Gogh , appears, in a cinephile’s fever dream. , by Martin Scorsese.