Why fashion on film is having a moment

Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film Phantom Thread takes place primarily in a fine London Fitzrovia townhouse, the home of the talented if temperamental fashion designer Reynolds Woodcock, played by Daniel Day-Lewis. It’s a period piece set in the world of midcentury haute couture: we see Woodcock woo wealthy clients, chide staff and pore over a dress’s stitching. Yet despite the captivating elegance of it all, for some, a meticulous fashion designer is an unexpected choice of protagonist for Anderson, who has previously focused on porn stars, oil barons and cult leaders in his films.

The ins and outs of the fashion industry have been all over our screens in recent years, both in narrative features and documentaries. Partly this is down to the simple sumptuousness of the subject matter, something Anderson has talked about in interviews about Phantom Thread. (“It looks pretty!” he told the Financial Times recently.) But looking pretty is only one aspect of it. Fashion, increasingly, is a home for drama, too.

“Looking at it historically, a fascination with the fashion world has been there throughout almost the entire history of cinema,” explains Marketa Uhlirova, curator of the Fashion in Film festival, which began in London in 2006. “In the popular imagination, fashion possesses that delicious mix of aspirational allure and vice, and this makes it an ideal setting for all sorts of plots.” As well as narrative dramas, there have been recent documentaries such as Dior and I, about the arrival of the designer Raf Simons at the storied house of Christian Dior, or The First Monday in May, about the 2015 Met Gala, a highlight of the fashion calendar. These are in the mould of The September Issue and its fictionalised predecessor The Devil Wears Prada – insidery, access-most-areas affairs, heavy on personality and intrigue, intended to make the viewer come away feeling as if they have learned something extra about the proceedings behind the scenes.

Full article here