Prèt-à-Porter

As mentioned before, for my thesis on film and fashion I'm analyzing Robert Altman's Prèt-à-Porter. The film is a parody and satire on the fashion world, and ridicules the industry. The movie, set during Paris Fashion Week, sends out a quite stereotype and negative message that only greed, betrayal and shallow 'keeping up appearances' are of the greatest importance in the business.

And yet, never did I see a Hollywood picture in which so many 'real designers and models appeared; Jean Paul Gaultier, Gianfranco Ferré -back then working for Dior-, Sonia Rykiel, Christian Lacroix, Issey Miyake, Campbell, Schiffer, Christensen... And not to mention the designs by many other great fashion houses. It's a shame that I've left the DVD at home, but when I return for the weekend I'll put up a screen shot of the end credits, so you can discover which designs -by whom- were featured in this 'fashion film' yourself! This movie beats Sex and The City for sure.

But the 'communications scientist' in me can't help but wonder; why were these fashion icons so happy to work on this project, if it puts the industry in bad daylight? Is bad publicity better than no publicity?

For anyone who loves fashion, this movie is a must!



Don't let this boring trailer mislead you, the film is much more fun...
And the title chosen for this movie is genius, Ready To Wear, when all designs presented are totally unwearable.

edit: And according to literature, Karl Lagerfeld was so furious that one of Altman's characters portrayed the french designer of chanel as a 'thief' that he called in the German juridical system and had the movie banned from German cinema's. But the picture does however feature quite some product placement by the house of Chanel. Curious and curiouser...