A New Panel Trend After a Fashion
It’s reimbursement time. After years of actresses usurping supermodels on the cover of fashion magazines, the tables have twisted, with runway sirens – not to talk about fashion editors and designers – storming the screen as though their waistlines depended on it. This year there have been two documentaries, Valentino: The Last Emperor and The September Issue, and the movie Coco Avant Chanel starring Audrey Tautou. The complete trend continues with another Chanel film, Coco Chanel ET Igor Stravinsky, out next April and a Vivienne Westwood biopic starring Kate Winslet in the works for Universal Pictures. Even film industry executives have been taken aback. James Hewison, an experienced film distributor who is finely tuned to the tastes of art-house audiences from his time as head of the Melbourne International Film Festival, was not expecting The September Issue to run for anything like 11 weeks. Documentaries usually normal five to six weeks in cinemas. Yet the cinematic peephole into the highly secretive world of American Vogue and its elusive editor Anna Win tour has taken a handsome $1.6 million in this country, crossing over from its expected demographic of women awestruck by the fashion industry. Hewison says he expected the film to find listeners, given it had come off the back of the hugely successful Meryl Streep comedy The Devil Wears Prada. ”We had not anticipated, I confess, that the film would get to the heady heights it has. It’s almost transcended its subject matter and, as much as I’m loath to admit this, the marketing campaign.” Those in the fashion industry, meanwhile, saw its pull a mile away, noting that the industry’s reputably bitchy milieu is a serious audience magnet, irrespective of gender, age or, more surprisingly, a concern for clothes. ”Anna [Win tour] has been demonized and [the audience] want to see how much of a witch she was,” says the editor of Vogue Australia, Kirstie Clements.
Clements says that many people ”who just didn’t seem to be predominantly interested in fashion” told her they were going to see the film. ”I think that people, for some reason, feel quite gratified by the idea that you’re going to be awful.” No doubt, there is something deliciously entertaining about seeing the world’s most elegant people behave like bores: Karl Lagerfeld whispering to Valentino that ”Compared to us, the rest are making rags”; Elle Macpherson horrifying a fellow haute-couture-clad guest at Valentino’s 45th anniversary gala by saying, ”No, you look amazing – amazing. Look at your tits!” Ask fashion insiders why there is a glut of these films and they describe the perfect sartorial storm, with myriad elements combining to make the trend almost inevitable. There has been an increasing prevalence of using designers as a mass-marketing tool over the past 10 years, for example, Nicole Miller’s limited-edition birth control pill packets and Paul Smith’s Evian bottle. Clements says this has ”democratized” fashion, and interest in it has never been greater. Hence the likes of Win tour have become a household name. The editor of Harper’s Bazaar, Edwina McCann, says reality TV shows about fashion wannabes (America’s Next Top Model, Project Runway, Stylist) have also helped whet an audience appetite to peek behind the chiffon curtain. The relatively recent phenomenon of celebrity-as-professional coat hanger, with Scarlet Johansson spraining for Dolce & Gabbana, Claire Danes for Gucci and Nicole Kidman for Chanel, has drawn attention to the industry even more.McCann says documentaries about fashion designers can avoid the traditional – and hefty – expenses involved with using actors, screenwriters and costumers while still delivering the necessary eye candy. ”You know you’re going to get celebrities, amazingly beautiful women, amazing dresses that are going to look better than any costuming in any film … You don’t even need a plot.” Even when studios do choose to restructure history, stranger-than-fiction drama is conveniently built in. A recent article in British Marie Claire discussed Wins let’s about to come about performance as Westwood. ”Wonder if she’ll dare recreate Vivienne’s Buckingham flashing incident?” it asked. The magazine was referring to when Westwood collected her Order of the British Empire at Buckingham Palace in 1992 exhausting no underwear, later twirling around in the courtyard, revealing all. Designers have been recognised as historical powerhouses, as is evidenced by recent museum retrospectives of couturiers such as Madeleine Vionnet and Paul Poiret. Hewison says this is one of the main reasons that his business, Madman, had the confidence to pick up Coco Chanel ET Igor Stravinsky (about Chanel’s connection with the Russian composer) at Cannes in May last year. This was months before The September Issue was released and Madman knew it had a hit on its hands. Hewison did not confirm whether his film about Coco Chanel would be the first to finally acknowledge her affair with an SS officer and a challenge to exploit pro-Aryan laws and take control of her perfume built-up commencement a Jewish family. But it raises the question: could the trend be accomplishment saturation point? Hewison sees the tendency continuing, saying these films are ”heat-seeking armaments” to women over the age of 30, recently naked by industry investigate to be ”the key decision-makers for choosing which film to see at the movies”.
