The films to watch if you didn't get invited to Fashion Week
Just because our invite got lost doesn't mean our love for fashion has to go missing too
Just because our invite got lost doesn't mean our love for fashion has to go missing too
Fa fa fa fa fashion. It’s Afterpay Australia Fashion Week. For those that aren’t clomping through Carriageworks but yearn to get into the spirit of things, turn to cinema.
Here's a non-exhaustive watchlist of documentaries, films about fashion, films that inspired our most treasured designers, and films that are just plain gorgeous.
Dior and I dir. Frédéric Tcheng
The documentary tracks Belgian fashion designer Raf Simons’ time as creative director of Christion Dior. Simons, who took over the venerated house in 2012, was tasked with putting together his first-ever haute couture show in eight weeks, an undertaking which usually requires five or six months.
Watch on Stan.
Christiane F. dir. Uli Edel
Raf Simons, like many Europeans of his generation, watched Uli Edel’s 1981 film Christiane F. in high school, where the film and book were discussed as part of the curriculum. The film, based on the autobiography of Christiane Felscherinow, is set in decaying, pre-unification Berlin.
Before the Wall fell in 1989, the neglected city was a bohemia for artists like David Bowie, Lou Reed, Nick Cave, and Tangerine Dream. This mythology, and the film, has served as a touchstone for Simons, whose Fall/Winter 2001-2002 “Riot, Riot, Riot” collection featured patches emblazoned with images from Christiane F. He later referenced the film during his Fall/Winter 2018 “Youth in Motion” collection.
‘I saw that movie when I was 14, when I way too young,” Simons told T Magazine. “I was obsessed with it.”
Notebooks on Cities and Clothes dir. Wim Wenders
“Fashion. I got nothing to do with that,” narrates director Wim Wenders at the start of the film, commissioned by the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.
Shortly after the release of his gothic fairy tale, Wings of Desire, and one year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German director was tasked with making a short film about a fashion designer.
He turned his gaze on the disruptive Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto. In a meditative video-essay that explores the affinity between fashion and filmmaking. There is a remarkable scene, in which Yamamoto speaks at length about the colour black. “Black is modest and arrogant at the same time. Black is lazy and easy, but mysterious. But above all black says this: I don't bother you, don't bother me.”
The Eyes of Laura Mars dir. Irvin Kershner
Written by a pre-Halloween John Carpenter and directed by a pre-Empire Strikes Back Irvin Kershner, this forgotten 1978 fashion industry thriller is pure camp. Faye Dunaway is Laura Mars, a fashion photographer who has visions of murders before they happen. The story is ridiculous and doesn’t quite work, but that’s inconsequential. It’s the glamour that's worth celebrating.
The set photos were composed in collaboration with Helmut Newton and inspired by the surreal violence of photographer Guy Bourdain — models of the era Lisa Taylor and Darlanne Fluegel cameo.
The fashion, oh god the fashion, it's too good. Theoni V. Aldridge's costume designs for Dunaway embody 70s refinement. There's no disco extravaganza here: it's all silky and crepe-de-chine pussy-bow blouses in neutral palettes, turtle-neck sweaters, capes and thigh high boots.
The film continues to inspire the fashion world, from Marios Schwab’s first collection for Halston, to Frida Giannini for Gucci’s Autumn/Winter 2011 collection, and Roland Mouret Pre-Fall 2013.
Watch on Amazon Prime
Prêt-à-Porter dir. Robert Altman
Blocked by Karl Lagerfield in Germany (over Forrest Whitaker’s line calling him a “thief”), Robert Altman’s critically-panned 1994 comedy is a ballistic “hate letter” to the fashion industry.
The film stars Sophia Loren, Lauren Bacall, Kim Basinger and Julia Roberts, with cameos from Naomi Campbell, Cher, Thierry Mugler, Jean Paul Gautier, Christian Lacroix, Issey Miyake, Gianfranco Ferré, Helena Christensen, Claude Montana, Björk, Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington and Nicola Trussardi.
As lore would have it, director Robert Altman (The Long Goodbye, Mash) was inspired to make the film after his wife took him to a fashion show by the designer Sonia Rykiel in Paris in 1984. “I really had no interest in going at all,” Altman reportedly said. “But then the lights went out, the music began, and I thought ‘so that’s it, it’s a circus. I’ve got to make a film about this!’”
Watch on Amazon Prime
The September Issue dir. R. J. Cutler
A deep-dive into the making of the hallowed Vogue September issue is essential viewing. R.J. Cutler’s 2009 documentary casts its lens on the most obscenely glamorous people (the icy Anna Wintour, late legend André Leon Talley, the delightful Grace Coddington, and Hamish Bowles) at the height of their influence. The documentary tracks the magazine’s September 2007 issue, which, until 2012, was its largest to date, setting a record at 840 pages.
Watch on Stan
The Devil Wears Prada dir. David Frankel
Perhaps the most quoted film in millennial/gen z lexicon. What is there left to say about The Devil Wears Prada? It's a modern classic that's carried us through sick days on the couch and long haul flights. It's always there for us. That's all.
Watch on Disney+
Phantom Thread dir. Paul Thomas Anderson
In preparation for his final role, the scrupulous, fictional couturier Reynold Woodcock (loosely based on Spanish designer Cristóbel Balenciaga), Daniel Day-Lewis spent a year learning to sew. Under the counsel of Marc Happel, the New York City Ballet’s costume designer, the process saw Lewis undertake recreating a gown by Balenciaga entirely by hand. Only when the dress was finished did filming begin. Phantom Thread is a mysterious and clammy film. Set in mid-1950s Britain, it examines the relationship between an obsessive, suffering artist, and his muse.
Watch on Binge
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