{"id":1122,"date":"2015-01-26T19:16:04","date_gmt":"2015-01-26T19:16:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/portmanteau.sg\/?p=1122"},"modified":"2022-01-05T07:34:46","modified_gmt":"2022-01-05T07:34:46","slug":"dior-and-i-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/portmanteau.sg\/blog\/2015\/01\/26\/dior-and-i-2014\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Dior and I (2014)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The hallowed reputation of Dior as a fashion house is such that even the best designers working today are intimidated by the prospect of helming it. In fact,\u00a0it was Raf Simons’ contorted facial features and pure emotion that made the biggest impression on me as\u00a0I watched the documentary as part of A Design Film Festival 2015<\/a> with my friend Benjamin last\u00a0Sunday. Indeed, even though Simons has since proven an able leader at Dior after\u00a0his appointment in 2012 (after a period of uncertainty following John Galliano’s notorious departure over an anti-Semitic outburst at a Paris cafe), it was a real treat to witness his first days at Dior.<\/p>\n

Directed by Fr\u00c3\u00a9d\u00c3\u00a9ric Tcheng, who collaborated on Matt Tyrnauer\u2019s Valentino: The Last Emperor<\/em> and was co-director of Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel<\/em>, the film chronicles Simons’\u00a0first collection\u2013haute couture, which he had never done before\u2013for the house. It\u00a0was a breath of fresh air, not\u00a0overly sentimental nor playing up to expectations of\u00a0sensationalism\u00a0and backbiting as some fashion films do, but with a\u00a0narrative shaped to draw the viewer back to Christian Dior’s heyday in the Fifties while paralleling it with the very similar challenges that an equally introverted Simons is going through. That’s not to mention the fact that he has to present a collection in a mere eight weeks and faces the pressure of doing\u00a0right by\u00a0Dior’s legacy (for those who are not familiar with the process, a couture collection usually takes months to create). The atmosphere\u00a0is nail-bitingly tense at times as Simons goes about the gargantuan test of executing his vision while having to manage\u00a0a new team.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, the film was not devoid of levity. Tcheng took care to include snatches of humour through exchanges between selected characters, including his affable “right hand”, Pieter Mulier, as well as Florence Chehet and Monique Bailly, premiere seamstresses of the Dior atelier. The\u00a0protestations of a camera-shy\u00a0Simons also come off as humorous rather than grating.<\/p>\n

However, what was also particularly admirable was how the film honoured every individual’s\u00a0experience. Whether it was that of the late couturier, Simons or the\u00a0seamstresses and tailors who work tirelessly in the atelier, everyone’s story,\u00a0dreams and ethos about the work that they do at Dior was given air time, and what was especially moving was how they were\u00a0united in their desire to honour the spirit and history of the house, which loomed as an overarching narrative in the film and was referenced in a sequence that imagines the ghost of Dior wandering through the workrooms at night, inspecting the work.<\/p>\n

And of course, there was the collection. The designs were pitch perfect, paying tribute to Dior’s romantic and feminine vision of the woman as a flower but also exuding Simons’ inclination for the conceptual\u2013apparent from the series of black looks with the iconic Bar jacket that opened the presentation, while increasingly vibrant\u00a0colours and more elaborate silhouettes built the show’s momentum to its exuberant and moving climax, all of this against the fantastical backdrop of room upon room enveloped by walls of fresh flowers.<\/p>\n

There are some critics who have said that the omission of John Galliano wasn’t the best decision. For example, Dhani Mau from \u00a0Fashionista.com felt that not mentioning Simons’ flamboyant and controversial predecessor made the film less authentic<\/a>.\u00a0However,\u00a0I felt that that the film was better for not including Galliano\u00a0as that turned the spotlight on Simons’ design process rather than the controversy that has dogged the house since Galliano’s departure. Moreover, the two designers are vastly different, and it would be missing the point of the documentary to compare them. Thus, the film signifies a new beginning, in more ways than one.<\/p>\n

In short, Dior and I<\/em> is an exquisite\u00a0gem of a documentary, a sincere tribute to the beauty of the creative process that also offers the exciting privilege of seeing how it unfolds at the most legendary of fashion houses. Even those\u00a0unschooled in fashion would be able to sympathise with the palpable pressure that Simons was feeling.\u00a0As I joked to Ben, a budding designer in the middle of creating his own collection, even pros\u00a0get the jitters\u00a0too.<\/p>\n