Films about fashion promise generous amounts of venality, ego and red-faced apoplexy – all the good stuff any documentarian worth his salt would salivate over.
People went to see The September Issue (2009) to watch a famously scary manager behind closed doors, with the gloves off. Though whether the gloves ever do really come off is vexed. Fashion docos peek behind the velvet curtain but present a distorted picture of what lies beyond. Everyone knows they’re being filmed, so they’re inevitably more polite. That might be one reason they keep getting made.
Dior And I, the latest inside-couture blockbuster, follows hot on the heels of Lagerfeld Confidential (2007), Valentino: The Last Emperor (2008) and Bill Cunningham New York (2010). I’m still waiting for the film industry equivalent, in which we venture inside the Weinstein Company to witness the great man dumping films by directors who’ve displeased him in the middle of February and relaxing, Hockey-style, by kicking back to share a cigar with Tarantino. Weinstein appears towards the end of Dior And I, sitting next to Jennifer Lawrence in the front row of Dior’s 2012 haute couture show in Paris, the expedited preparation for which this film is all about.
Raf Simons, the Antwerp-born former head of Jil Sander, has eight weeks to prepare a collection which we’re told usually takes four to six months to get ready. His appointment ended a period of transition at Dior that began when John Galliano got busted for ardently espousing the merits of Hitler in a Parisian bistro the year before. Galliano isn’t mentioned, not even obliquely, in Dior And I.
Simons is a different proposition altogether. A reserved man, Simons leaves the rallying of the troops to his second-in-command Pieter Mulier, whose sunny disposition immediately wins over the seamstresses who form the beating heart of the organisation. Some of them have worked for Dior for over 40 years, and the focus on the atelier is the film’s distinguishing feature.
Where most fashion docos focus on individuals – Valentino or Anna Wintour or Cunningham – Dior And I is a true ensemble piece. Simons might be the hand behind it all but he’s a remote figure, and the film’s deep and wide excavation of the organisation makes it not just something new, but oddly moving.
4/5 stars
Dior And I is in cinemas now.
