If you’re lucky enough to have a decent amount of time off work during the looming festive period, you tend to realise pretty quickly that, contrary to what you thought when you excitedly booked those days off, there’s only so much time you can spend hanging out at home, with nothing to do, before you drive yourself slightly mad. For days where you have zero plans but it’s too cold to force yourself out of the house, it’s good to have a series of DVDs stockpiled (or a list of titles on your Netflix to-watch list) for emergencies.
Fashion-focused documentaries are particularly enjoyable over the festive period because, generally, there’s a hefty amount of glitz, glamour and aspiration thrown in. We’ve rounded up a few of the best fashion documentaries for you to enjoy over the Christmas break.
Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s
Scatter my Ashes at the Bergdorf’s plays tribute to – you guessed it – iconic American department store, Bergdorfs, through snippets of archive footage and interviews with fans of the store. You don’t have to have visited Bergdorf’s to appreciate this love-in, though, as the magic of the store and its rich history is explained wonderfully by through anecedotes from various celebrities and fashion industry insiders.
The Eye Has to Travel
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Chronicling the life of inimitable former Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar editor, Diana Vreeland – The Eye Has To Travel delves deeper than your standard fashion personality-profiling documentary, mainly because Vreeland was famously outspoken and had opinions on just about everything, fashion-related or not. Most of Vreeland’s story is actually told in her own voice throughout the documentary as her booming voice was captured on plenty of interview tapes over the years, making for great narration fodder.
The True Cost
We were delighted when we discovered The True Cost was available on Netflix and Amazon, as it’s one of those films that everyone who wears clothes should watch. However, you should be warned beforehand that this is not your average glossy, cheery fashion documentary. The True Cost exposes the dirty side of the fashion industry, with its dangerous factories, underpaid workforce and awful ‘green footprint.’ It’s an uncomfortable, but rewarding, watch that we can all learn something from.
Dior & I
Also available on Netflix, Dior & I follows Raf Simons’s baptism of fire as he, together with his fabulous team, work at an insane speed to create his début collection for Dior. To make things even more pressurised, Simons has zero experience in working with couture. This documentary follows Simons’s shaky journey to winning over the fashion press – it’s a bit of an emotional rollercoaster, but is all the better for it.
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