Fashion Industry Films and the Move to Fast Fashion

Most clothing industry films concentrate on individual designers, who rise from obscurity to fame. For example, Valentino: The Last Emperor (2008) grounds its hero’s journey by connecting it with that of the protagonist of Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960), Marcello Rubini (Marcello Mastroianni), who struggles to make a life for himself as an artist in the decadent world to which he is attracted. Unlike Marcello, Valentino meets and pairs up with Giancarlo Giametti for more than 45 years, both in business and life, building both a vital domestic relationship and a vibrant business career with Giametti’s strengths focused on his mind for money, as well as his role of protector and life partner. Entertainment Weekly’s Lisa Schwarzbaum notes that the Nino Rota’s score for the film “provides a Fellini overlay,” reinforcing the connection between the 1960 film and Valentino’s life. The documentary, however, primarily highlights preparations for one of Valentino’s couture shows and culminates in a climactic commemoration of Valentino’s 45^th anniversary in the fashion industry, a striking acknowledgment of his ability to overcome bankruptcy and succeed for the long term as a multi-millionaire designer.

            But the film also reveals another reason for Valentino’s retirement, according to Stephen Holden of The New York Times: “Swallowed up by big business, the great fashion houses of Europe are now mass-market franchises with designer names attached to all manner of clothing and accessories.” The documentary primarily concentrates on the spectacle, first of the final show, and then of Valentino’s 45^th anniversary event. Here the extravagance includes spectacular fireworks. For Valentino, the world of fashion was once a world of “floating fairies” in red. In the hands of Italian millionaire Matteo Marzotto, that is sure to change, the film shows us, and the fairies will be missed. Here the rise of the individual Valentino is aided by a partner, Giametti, who, perhaps, finds a way to shield Valentino and his fashion line from multinational bankers and the inevitable changes they will require.

            One of the most provocative examples of a design artist succeeding in spite of poverty and lack of support is Anne Fontaine’s biographical drama, Coco Before Chanel (2009). The film highlights Chanel’s (Audrey Tautou) rise from dire circumstances to success as “France’s famous mademoiselle,” exploring the journey Gabrielle (Coco) takes from an orphanage where her father leaves her and her sister and never returns to fashion design fame. Beginning as a seamstress for performers and a part-time singer at a cabaret where she earns her nickname, Coco, from a song she sings with her sister to opportunities to design hats, the film portrays Chanel as a fighter who overcomes adversity with help from her relationships with Baron Etienne Balsan (Beoit Poelvoorde) and Arthur Capel (Alessandro Nivola), who dies tragically in a car accident. In spite of these forays, in the context of the film, “she’s elegant in relation to the extravagant luster of the rich.” 

            The story, according to Roger Ebert, is “not about rags to riches but about survival of the fittest,” and provides a single vision of Chanel’s rise in the fashion world, a vision that glosses over her diminished popularity during and after World War II due to collaboration with the Nazis and ends with her death in 1971, when she was still working, as the film says, “on a Sunday.”  Although the film’s portrayal of Chanel is unsympathetic and suggests her decisions to create fashions that “liberated women from the hideous excesses of the late 19^th century” was based more on her own preferences for sailor suits than any feminist leanings, it demonstrates well how an individual artist can overcome adversity and become an unlikely hero, at least in the fashion world. As Ebert asserts, “To the winner belongs the spoils, even if in life, you started pretty far back from the starting line.”

            Ebert’s claim aligns well with the fictionalized version of fashion show preparation found in Robert Altman’s Ready to Wear, an illustration of the behind-the-scenes activity before and during Paris Fashion Week 1994. The film provides a uncomplimentary portrayal of the fashion industry, a “hate letter” according to Richard Corliss, but a “comedy crossed with a home movie,” according to Roger Ebert. What stands out, however, amid the personal injustices and competitions, is a nod toward the environment missing from most films. At the ready-to-wear show, one reporter asks a designer, “How do you feel that fifty percent of the world’s pollution comes from textile mills,” shocking the designer and prompting the viewer to wonder if she’s right. Do the fashion and clothing industries contribute this significantly to everyday environmental disasters such as air and water pollution? And of course the answer is yes.