Removing the veil in front of fashion
From finance to fashion, certain industries are traditionally, by design, cloaked in mystery. New York Times fashion columnist Vanessa Friedman’s column, Fashion Has Much to Gain From Honest Documentaries, points out how fashion brands clearing the air of this dated, faux mystique to connect with consumers in an age of direct communication and transparency.
Fashion is an industry of stagecraft, of smoke and mirrors and “the dream” that everyone natters on and on about because it drives sales: You want that dress/bag/shoe (you don’t need it) because it represents some possible better version of you, and seeing the sweat and tears and computer modeling that goes into making it could destroy its transformative appeal.
The story profiles the rise of fashion documentaries such as Dior and I,” a documentary that looks inside the storied world of the Christian Dior fashion house, as well as other fashion-centric films. Of this new breed of branded documentaries, the most engaging are the ones that show radical transparency and unfiltered human emotion.
But of the films that have been most successful, there has been one constant: the willingness on the part of the brands to expose themselves, in all their gilded flaws. To cry, as Mr. Simons does on screen. To doubt, like Mme. Bailly. To talk back, like Mme. Rivière. To push themselves for each other, as do all of the above.
Read the full story on The New York Times website
