Anyone who’s seen The Devil Wears Prada has at least some idea what it’s like to work at Vogue (or at least, its fictional equivalent). If you’ve seen the documentaries The September Issue or Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel, you have a more accurate idea of putting out fashion magazine in the U.S.
The natural companion piece to those is Mademoiselle C, about Carine Roitfeld, the woman who, for 10 years, edited Vogue Paris until her suddenly announced retirement in 2011 to start her own U.S.-based fashion magazine.
Roitfeld isn’t a quarter the personality that Anna Wintour (or Miranda Priestly) is; she actually seems to like people. That makes for a less dramatic (or at least melodramatic) story arc. Where are the tantrums, the long-suffering assistants, the hateful aside from her critics?
Of course she had some critics: She pioneered (with Texas designer Tom Ford) the quasi-porn fashion shoots of the ’90s and represents the intersection of Parisian chic and New York punk/hip-hop. But she’s been with the same man for 30 years (they’ve never married) and they have two well-adjusted kids. The movie could use a little more of her fashion of less of her reality.
But Mademoiselle C. is a movie less for those interested in dishy behind-the-scenes intrigue (though it does touch on, but not linger over, her board-room battle with former employer Conde Nast Publishing) than for those who have a passion to understand the process of inventing fashion — and more specifically, creating from scratch a high-end fashion magazine. And let’s face it: That’s the gays.
So of course the film is chock full of gay appeal (aside from, ya know, just being about clothes), from the opening scene with a gender-bending dominatrix-clad fashion blogger to photographer Bruce Weber to gay designers like Ford, Jean-Paul Gaultier (pictured with Roitfeld) and that walking Easter Island sculpture, stone-faced Karl Lagerfeld.
With Fashion Week upon us this month, the film couldn’t be timelier. Watch it on a double-bill with the newest episode of Project Runway and a visit to boutiques to see the latest collections.
Three stars. 90 mins. Unrated. Now playing at the Angelika Mockingbird Station.
