Kevin Macdonald’s finely balanced portrait of the disgraced Dior designer, on Mubi from Friday, is the newest arrival on a catwalk of fashion industry movies, from Funny Face to Zoolander
For those who bleat on about the iniquities of supposed “cancel culture”, the career of British fashion designer John Galliano is a useful counterpoint. Sacked in 2011 as the creative director of Christian Dior after an appalling incident of antisemitic abuse on his part, he spent two years in the wilderness before being hired by Oscar de la Renta and subsequently Maison Margiela, where he has been for a decade. A-listers still wear his gowns on red carpets. Life goes on. Kevin Macdonald’s documentary High & Low: John Galliano (streaming on Mubi from 26 April) chronicles Galliano’s rise and fall and rise with a more distanced, critical eye than you may expect from a film co-produced by Vogue publisher Condé Nast. There’s due appreciation of his distinctive design sensibility, but sharp scrutiny of personal flaws enabled by an unruly, permissive industry.
With its loucheness and capacity for bad behaviour, the rag trade has always made a great film subject: the clothes provide the visual dazzle while the volatile business of it all provides the drama. Macdonald’s film is the latest in a recent run of fine fashion docs: Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui’s ravishing McQueen told the markedly more tragic story of Alexander McQueen, the ill-fated enfant terrible of the industry, with a formal flamboyance well matched to his extravagant aesthetic and a humane consideration of his demons. Frédéric Tcheng’s Dior and I isn’t as burdened by pathos in its spectacular overview of designer Raf Simons’s debut season for the venerable French fashion house, but is compelling in its detailing of creative process. The same film-maker also made Halston, a tricksily framed but compulsive portrait of the disco-era American designer, who went from ubiquitous tastemaker to sellout by the time of his Aids-related death in 1990.
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