Dior and I

The name Chris­t­ian Dior is so enshrined in glam­our and his­to­ry that fash­ion-watch­ers will nat­u­ral­ly grav­i­tate towards this behind-the-scenes doc. But for the layper­son, is there — to para­phrase the famous Lin­da Evan­ge­lista quote — any­thing to get out of bed for here?

The answer is root­ed in the glitzy trail that direc­tor Frédéric Tcheng’s debut, Diana Vree­land: The Eye Has to Trav­el, spun fol­low­ing its release in 2011. At a VIP screen­ing in Paris, Tcheng met a Dior head hon­cho. He knew that the fash­ion house was in the process of replac­ing out­go­ing cre­ative direc­tor, John Gal­liano, and that a Bel­gian chap named Raf Simons was lead­ing the pack of contenders.

“He’s a min­i­mal­ist!” thought Tcheng at the time — a procla­ma­tion expressed ear­ly on in the film. Invit­ing a min­i­mal­ist into the house of Dior car­ried the poten­tial for fiery dust-ups. Doc­u­ment­ing this chang­ing of the guard was going to be Tcheng’s film. For­tu­nate­ly for Simons and unfor­tu­nate­ly for Tcheng, give or take a few signs of mild stress, every­one rubs along admirably and the film des­per­ate­ly wants for dra­mat­ic intrigue.

The strongest sto­ry strand, which doc­u­ments prepa­ra­tions for Simons’ first haute cou­ture col­lec­tion, is its sly, per­haps inad­ver­tent demys­ti­fi­ca­tion of auteur the­o­ry. What this means is Tcheng and his cam­eras spend more time with the seam­stress­es than with any­one else. These woman and men, dressed plain­ly in white lab coats, have worked at Dior for up to 40 years. They cre­ate Simons’ visions with skill and no affectations.

It’s a sweet inside por­trait that coun­ter­acts The Dev­il Wears Pra­da-esque depic­tions of the fash­ion world as ulti­mate­ly psy­chot­ic and fuelled by ego. Gen­tle­ness extends to the mem­oirs of the mae­stro him­self. Chris­t­ian Dior’s account of trans­form­ing from a nat­u­ral­ly pri­vate per­son to a pub­lic fig­ure is nar­rat­ed over archive pho­tog­ra­phy. Pas­sion rather than pow­er-lust defines Dior and I. Tcheng makes the most of the airy mate­r­i­al, craft­ing it in a rep­re­sen­ta­tive spirit.