Hyperkult

My designer documentary kick of a couple months ago was preparation for The September Issue’s recent release. The chance to look behind the darkened lenses of “Nuclear Wintour,” as Vogue editrix Anna Wintour is known by some, and what continues to be the only fashion magazine I read religiously, was a voyeuristic (Vogue-ristic?) dream come true. While the movie is not earth-shatteringly revealing, it is transportive, even for audience members who don’t know Thakoon from Chris Benz.

I had the chance to prescreen the film and interview director R.J. Cutler, who previously produced the Bill Clinton campaign documentary The War Room. The politically-minded (and sartorially-challenged) filmmaker was enchanted by Wintour and her Condé Nast family, even if getting Vogue Creative Director Grace Coddington to smile for the camera was a trying task. I’ve posted my article below, which appears in the, ahem, September issue of SOMA. Click on the article for legible text.

Burberry A/W 2009 campaign, Photographed by Mario Testino

Those who know me best know that I live, breathe, and bleed The New Yorker and make my best attempt to read each issue from cover-to-cover. By week’s end, pages are dogeared, polysyllabic words I don’t know are underlined, and I—probably annoyingly so—often end up starting sentences with, “That reminds me of this article I saw in The New Yorker…” Plus there’s the fact that they’ve made the stylistic choice to use the diæresis diacritic mark, which makes consecutive vowels look badass.

This week’s New Yorker is one of what I believe are two yearly Style issues. That makes sense if their newsstand date coincides with New York’s Ready-to-Wear Fashion Week, which this latest issue does. The last Style installment featured Ariel Levy’s profile of Lanvin designer Alber Elbaz, an article which was so humanizing, so punch-you-in-the-stomach good that I teared up thinking about this sort of hapless, lovable man who’s insecure even in his brilliance.

Anyway, the point of all this verbal fawning is that if you love fashion, you should pick up this week’s issue. I’ve already raced through Dana Goodyear’s story on “The Wearst” (that’s fuschia, metallic, and animal print-happy interior designer Kelly Wearstler to you), a look inside the sunshine and rainbows Zappos.com headquarters, and a profile of Burberry creative director Christopher Bailey, a man who’s heaved the brand out of a ho-hum, deglamourized phase during his tenure there. It’s fascinating to have learned about Burberry’s inception and evolution over the years (literally in the trenches at one point, hence the eponymic coat name), and bear witness to the utilitarian high style it pushes today. To people who say fashion can’t be intelligent, thoughtful, or socially relevant I say “novacheck yourself” and point them toward the writing of Lauren Collins.

And now it’s Fashion Week, which I’ll be following from afar. I expect Alexander and Marc to bring it as usual, but I’m really hoping to see some new designers inject a little life onto the runways. I wouldn’t go so far as to say there’s been a “famine of beauty,” as André Leon Talley so succinctly put it, but some fresh inspiration wouldn’t hurt.

Photo credit: Kitsune Noir

I recently resurrected my long-dormant Netflix account, only to be greeted by a queue that stretches 78 films long—88 if you count the 10 titles languishing in the purgatory otherwise known as “Saved DVDs.” The unruly list starts with Jean-Luc Godard’s A Woman is a Woman and ends with Louis Malle’s Au Revoir Les Enfants, but honestly, what I really want to (re-)rent next is The Pelican Brief.

While I contemplate inviting Julia Roberts’ timorous Darby Shaw into my living room, in the interim I’ve been occupying myself with a series of designer documentaries—a mailbox march of red enveloped arrivals inspired by the impending release of The September Issue. (From what a trusted film journalist friend tells me, it lives up to even steely-eyed Anna Wintour’s measure of excellence.)

My first excursion into the world of couture on screen was Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton, director Loïc Prigent’s 2007 film about, arguably, fashion’s most influential designer. Once rebuked—and fired—for his notorious “grunge” collection for Perry Ellis, Jacobs is now an industry darling, evidenced by his elite editorial and celebrity following. The sartorial vanguard’s often unconventional vision has filtered into the wardrobes of mainstream America, with suburbanites waiting with bated breath for the H&M collaboration that may never come. Look to your local designer knockoff kiosk to find rainbow-colored, Eye Love-inspired PVC handbags still selling strong, years after Jessica Simpson paraded her pet “Louis” around on Newlyweds—much to the horror of genuine Murakami aficionados.

Visually striking, but devoid of true depth, I found myself making the most tangential—and maybe inappropriate—of associations while watching the movie. Paul Thomas Anderson, speaking about a 70s porn documentary about John Holmes that informed Boogie Nights, described the Julia St. Vincent-helmed picture as more “love letter” than objective slice of life filmmaking. Then again, I’m not sure how precisely cinematic a documentary about an adult star is meant to be. Nevertheless, the same might be said of Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton, which engages insomuch as it invites viewers into the charmeuse-strewn workroom where Vuitton collections are born, all the while portraying its creator sympathetically. But beyond this hallowed space, where Jacobs compulsively snacks on protein bars while giving the “yay” or “nay” to fabric flower adornments, there was a marked absence of meaningful insight into Jacobs himself.

I was searching for neither a scathing exposé of Jacobs’ drug-addled years, nor lascivious confessionals from ex-lovers, but a genuine inquiry into the Mythos of Jacobs. What we are given instead is, at best, a half-realized portrait of the slim couturier, and a digitally rendered purple fairy flitting about to symbolize “inspiration.” But alas, had Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton been a less benign movie, you probably wouldn’t be able to purchase it at Marc by Marc Jacobs stores internationally, as is now the case. Look for it somewhere between the mushroom key chains and coffee table photography books.

That said, it still gets points for featuring one of my favorite Vuitton collections to date. It’s pretty, fun, and often inspirational, even if it sometimes comes off like a less thoughtful creative patchwork than the LV Tribute Bag at the center of the Vuitton Spring/Summer 2007 showcase.

Official website of Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton