Why fashion on screen lacks style
Posted by Lucky on Jun 11, 2010
As a film on Isabella Blow is planned, Geoffrey Macnab argues that haute couture and cinema are more likely to clash than complement
The news that a film is being planned about the late Isabella Blow, possibly with Sam Taylor-Wood directing, isn’t a surprise. There was something inherently cinematic about Blow, who died in 2007 at the age of 48. “Fashion’s nutty aunt,” as she was called by New York Magazine, Blow often dressed as if she was appearing in some high-society version of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari directed by Tim Burton. The former fashion editor of Tatler was credited with kick-starting the careers of Alexander McQueen and Philip Treacy, among others. She led a colourful and sometimes troubled life in a very rarefied world. There are all the ingredients in her life story for a strong movie biopic. Even so, cinema’s previous engagements with the fashion industry, make it hard to avoid a feeling of trepidation. The box-office success of The Devil Wears Prada notwithstanding, movie ventures into the fashion world have often proved very shabby indeed.
Of course, fashion and films have gone hand in hand from the outset. Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly wore Givenchy. Adrian, MGM’s top costume designer in the 1930s and early 1940s, who dressed stars from Greta Garbo to Jean Harlow and Joan Crawford, was largely responsible for the wildly exotic glamour found in even routine MGM films of the era.
There is a natural symbiosis between the two worlds, but when they invade one another’s territories problems begin. To understand why fashion movies are generally so insipid, it is instructive to watch one of the better recent films set in this overheated world. Matt Tyrnauer’s documentary Valentino: The Last Emperor has one quality that most fashion movies lack, namely emotional depth. Tyrnauer realises that for outsiders, watching glamorous people in glamorous settings blowing air kisses at one another can be a deadening experience. The behind-the-scenes bitching at catwalk shows or frantic efforts to finish new collections don’t, of themselves, make for decent drama.
