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Fashionable movies / Life of Johanna

Movie reviews: Marc Jacobs/Louis Vuitton and Karl Lagerfeld Confidential

Well the holidays are over and tomorrow I’ll go back to my regular work schedule. It feels a bit weird as I gotten used to a very relaxed way of life. I’ve worked only three days during the last fortnight and have had a lot of spare time for both sewing and blogging.
Anyhow, as promised, here comes two more fashion movie mini reviews:

Marc Jacobs and Louis Vuitton

Marc Jacobs and Louis Vuitton: This documentary portraits Marc Jacobs as a very hands-on designer, constantly tweaking, cutting, ironing and everything goes fast fast fast. Watching the movie I got a bit worried about his stress levels. Actually, shortly after the filming he had to check into rehab for a relapse into substance abuse. Apparently he came out strong and now has daily (!) therapy sessions, as well as daily workouts and specially prepared meals. Being a fashion designer is not for the faint of heart, that’s for sure! Anyway this is a great movie, it really gives the viewer insight to the design process and how ideas are developed. The movie is made by the same director as Signe Chanel, Loïc Prigent.

Marc Jacobs and Louis Vuitton is available on YouTube (but lacking the last 10 minutes) and on DVD. I actually downloaded the movie from the French channel Artevod for not much money, the only drawback was that I had some problems following the French voice-over commentaries. Anyway I wish that more channels would follow Artevod’s example and offer all their documentaries as downloads.

Karl Lagerfeld Confidential

Karl Lagerfeld Confidential: Karl Lagerfeld on the other hand appears to be more “hands-off”. He sits mostly behinds his black shiny desk churning out sketches by the minute and lets the assistants do the tweaking. One thing that struck me is how large his entourage is. It actually reminds of the bedroom scene in the Coppola movie Marie Antoinette where there is about 40 people in the room before she even wakes up. I’d say that the nickname Emperor Karl is very fitting. But although he is seldom alone, he appears to be rather lonely and hides behind a shield of clever comments and a know-it-all attitude.

My one criticism is that the director seems to have an almost unhealthy respect for Karl’s coolness and doesn’t really tries to get close to the designer – i.e the movie isn’t all that confidential, despite the title. Thus the movie is a bit of a “Karl show”. Still interesting to watch though.

2 Comments

  • luckylibbet
    January 5, 2009 at 6:12 am

    tack så mycket-

    I hope this is correct, not knowing Swedish – in any case, thank you very much for posting the documentaries. It’s easier for you in Europe to see some of the designer videos that we in the US would like to see but the audience here is too small. Thanks for YouTube – smaller audiences can view some content that we have not been able to see otherwise.

    Reply
  • Johanna
    January 9, 2009 at 9:24 am

    >>Luckylibbet: Your Swedish is spot on 🙂 I guess it's a little easier getting access to fashion movies in Europe and at least Lagerfeld Confidential hit the cinemas in my hometown. But I still wish that these movies became more accessible, since fashion makes for intriguing viewing I think. I'll try to review a couple of more movies soon, and I also got a couple waiting in the mail, but work and general life stuff seems to get in the way of blogging and reviewing right now.

    Reply

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