Lagerfield Confidential
Directed by Rodolph Marconi
If Karl Lagerfeld wants to be thought of as an apparition, he gets his wish in director Rodolphe Marconi’s surface-obsessed documentary, which opens this week at Film Forum. Lagerfeld Confidential’s portrait of the artistic director who sexed-up and resuscitated the fusty, old-dame Chanel brand, allows its subject to dictate the terms of his portrait. In an era of ever-present spin, it’s a popular—though less than satisfying—approach.
Lagerfeld Confidential is a glimpse into the designer’s inner-sanctum: a Paris apartment piled high with books, magazines and a buffet of variously outfitted iPods. Bowls are filled with the signature silver rings Lagerfeld wears stacked like finger armor and whole dresser drawers are devoted to piles of the stiff white collars paired with all black outfits which give Lagerfeld the look of a high priest of fashion. It is a world where house keys, luggage, steering wheels and doorknobs will never sully Lagerfeld’s fingertips, with a retinue of staff to run interference with such bedevilments of the physical world.
Though human companionship appears a necessary evil (Marconi hints at personal feuds which will be opaque to anyone but the most devout Lagerfeld-watcher) one relationship is non-negotiable. It’s the one between Lagerfeld and his binky: the pillow his nanny crafted for him as a child, which he still uses to stave off anxiety during his jet-setting.
Amidst the glitterati fashion shows, model fittings and photo sessions, Marconi occasionally sets Lagerfeld down for some couch time. With his subject grinning indulgently from his perch on a white sofa, Marconi attempts to plumb Lagerfeld’s childhood in a sophisticated Hamburg family. Treading a fine line between sycophant giggling at Lagerfeld’s arch asides and documentarian, Marconi’s armchair psychoanalysis yields some of the film’s inadvertently funniest moments, as when he asks Lagerfeld, “When you were a child, did you ever idealize your mother?”
Lagerfeld’s cryptic observations: “I love the smell of building sites,” and “I’ve always loved advertising,” suggest his closest resemblance may be to another fan of white-haired androgyny, photography and the ephemeral worlds of fashion, celebrity and beauty, Andy Warhol.
Warholian in his collapsing of artist and art in a deliriously conceptual hall of mirrors, Lagerfeld is his own best invention. “I don’t want to be real in other people’s lives,” he confesses. Lagerfeld begins and ends the documentary as a cipher whose entire being is defined by fashion’s imperative never to stay fixed and knowable. While Lagerfeld’s outward appearance can be iconoclastically static, everything else is a whirl on style’s ever-changing merry-go-round.
Lagerfeld is shown more often taking photos than designing clothes, waxing melancholic on the hopeless effort of photography to trap time forever. It is the principal irony of Lagerfeld Confidential that a man determined never to rest or stop, or become gripped by nostalgia, is shown incessantly laboring in his photography, to sticky-trap time.
In addition to glimpses of Vogue’s Grace Coddington, Stephen Gan, Princess Caroline of Monaco and Nicole Kidman at the apex of her immobilized forehead phase, fashion junkies will enjoy how well Herr Lagerfeld upholds the industry’s unspoken bargain. He sanctifies fashion’s enduring glamour by refusing to reveal too much. He thus keeps the brand intact, unsullied by sloppy reality TV-era confession. And in the process he skillfully turns another man’s documentary into his own marketing tool.
Directed by Rodolph Marconi
If Karl Lagerfeld wants to be thought of as an apparition, he gets his wish in director Rodolphe Marconi’s surface-obsessed documentary, which opens this week at Film Forum. Lagerfeld Confidential’s portrait of the artistic director who sexed-up and resuscitated the fusty, old-dame Chanel brand, allows its subject to dictate the terms of his portrait. In an era of ever-present spin, it’s a popular—though less than satisfying—approach.
Lagerfeld Confidential is a glimpse into the designer’s inner-sanctum: a Paris apartment piled high with books, magazines and a buffet of variously outfitted iPods. Bowls are filled with the signature silver rings Lagerfeld wears stacked like finger armor and whole dresser drawers are devoted to piles of the stiff white collars paired with all black outfits which give Lagerfeld the look of a high priest of fashion. It is a world where house keys, luggage, steering wheels and doorknobs will never sully Lagerfeld’s fingertips, with a retinue of staff to run interference with such bedevilments of the physical world.
Though human companionship appears a necessary evil (Marconi hints at personal feuds which will be opaque to anyone but the most devout Lagerfeld-watcher) one relationship is non-negotiable. It’s the one between Lagerfeld and his binky: the pillow his nanny crafted for him as a child, which he still uses to stave off anxiety during his jet-setting.
Amidst the glitterati fashion shows, model fittings and photo sessions, Marconi occasionally sets Lagerfeld down for some couch time. With his subject grinning indulgently from his perch on a white sofa, Marconi attempts to plumb Lagerfeld’s childhood in a sophisticated Hamburg family. Treading a fine line between sycophant giggling at Lagerfeld’s arch asides and documentarian, Marconi’s armchair psychoanalysis yields some of the film’s inadvertently funniest moments, as when he asks Lagerfeld, “When you were a child, did you ever idealize your mother?”
Lagerfeld’s cryptic observations: “I love the smell of building sites,” and “I’ve always loved advertising,” suggest his closest resemblance may be to another fan of white-haired androgyny, photography and the ephemeral worlds of fashion, celebrity and beauty, Andy Warhol.
Warholian in his collapsing of artist and art in a deliriously conceptual hall of mirrors, Lagerfeld is his own best invention. “I don’t want to be real in other people’s lives,” he confesses. Lagerfeld begins and ends the documentary as a cipher whose entire being is defined by fashion’s imperative never to stay fixed and knowable. While Lagerfeld’s outward appearance can be iconoclastically static, everything else is a whirl on style’s ever-changing merry-go-round.
Lagerfeld is shown more often taking photos than designing clothes, waxing melancholic on the hopeless effort of photography to trap time forever. It is the principal irony of Lagerfeld Confidential that a man determined never to rest or stop, or become gripped by nostalgia, is shown incessantly laboring in his photography, to sticky-trap time.
In addition to glimpses of Vogue’s Grace Coddington, Stephen Gan, Princess Caroline of Monaco and Nicole Kidman at the apex of her immobilized forehead phase, fashion junkies will enjoy how well Herr Lagerfeld upholds the industry’s unspoken bargain. He sanctifies fashion’s enduring glamour by refusing to reveal too much. He thus keeps the brand intact, unsullied by sloppy reality TV-era confession. And in the process he skillfully turns another man’s documentary into his own marketing tool.
