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Looking for Something to Binge Watch? Try Fashion's Behind-the-Scenes Videos - Vogue.com

At this point in lockdown life, there is almost no bit of video content I have not consumed. I’m watching everyone’s Instagram Stories. I’ve YouTube’d “What are soap brows?” and I’ve downloaded TikTok to keep with the latest cute farm animals and challenges. As for proper television I have made all the rounds: The Sopranos to Love Island to The Crown, with pit stops at WandaVision, Call My Agent, and Framing Britney Spears. While I have high hopes for the sensual thrill of Stanley Tucci eating his way across Italy (this weekend’s plans), I am totally TV’ed out. None of this prestige or trash or totally middling content has made me feel a thing.

And yet I have a favorite video of 2020: Nick Knight’s S.W.A.L.K. film for Maison Margiela. I have a 2021 frontrunner too: Marine Serre’s Core series. The common thread between them is a stylized look at how a fashion collection is made. 

Traditionally, the how of fashion has been less publicized than the who, what, where, or why. It’s hard to telegraph the lightning strike of inspiration on camera: Play it up too much and it becomes camp, spend too long on it and you edge into boring instructional video. Capturing the magic of fashion—the simple way adjusting a seam can change an entire attitude—has proven difficult for documentarians. That’s not to say there aren’t greats. Douglas Keeve’s Unzipped, Loïc Prigent’s Signe Chanel, and Frédéric Tcheng’s Dior and I each have a unique tone and pace, but still manage to get across the fascination and the hard work of how fashion goes from sketch to dress. 

When the runways shifted to digital formats, I expected to see a lot more of these types of films. Designers paging through books, images pinned up to moodboards, the whirr of sewing machines as a designer and her team eye up and repin a sample on a fit model. Instead, fashion films have swung in the opposite direction: there are music videos, cinematic mini-movies, and audience-free live-streams of traditional runway shows. The 52-minute exploration into how exactly John Galliano and his Maison Margiela team make a collection happen and Marine Serre’s 3-hours of accumulated footage of upcycling and at-home life stand out not just for their runtimes—truly binge-able—but for their willingness to reveal some previously secret truths. In a season of virtual fantasias, a bit of humanity and authenticity go a long way. 

Other brands, large and small, have made equally enjoyable—if more bite-sized—“how it’s made” video content. At both JW Anderson and Loewe, Jonathan Anderson walked viewers through how his collections come to be, touching on inspiration, make, and the production of his innovative lookbooks. Edward Crutchley’s film spliced clips of models with fabric being pulled off machines, Lutz Huelle showed how to DIY a tee, and Chopova Lowena spotlit the processes of their female artist collaborators. 

On some level, my obsession with watching a knitter cast on or a vintage jumper cut up and transformed into a dress is “oddly satisfying”—how Instagram categorizes videos of slime, goops, and that weird sandy sludge. There is a pleasure in watching a process come to fruition, especially when that process subverts or defies your expectations, which I’d argue the best darting, draping, and construction can do.

But the big treat of process videos is that they do the best job of situating fashion in our lives. I won’t ever be a mermaid or a model dancing, but I could, maybe, knit my own sweater or know the person who did. I could unearth my sewing machine and cut up old tees to make a new patchwork top or watch enough instructional videos to learn how to make a macramé bag. In our pandemic year, DIY culture has experienced a boon—as have the brands that have opted to share ideas, resources, and stories of make, Alexander McQueen, Reese Cooper, and JW Anderson included. 

Not only do these types of videos give you the glimmer of hope that you could do it, they also reinforce all the ways you cannot. What better way to teach you to appreciate the artisans—and the price tag that goes along with them—than showcasing the workers in Marine Serre’s Italian factory cutting up old scarves to make skirts? These videos offer a potent reminder: Whether you are buying the highest of luxury or the cheapest of fast fashion, there are people behind your purchases. Any obfuscation of who those people are should be cause for alarm, especially at a moment when the fashion industry’s human rights violations are coming to the fore. 

Maybe process videos should be required viewing for shoppers: to purchase a new pair of jeans, you have to learn about how those jeans came to be. Until the day that happens I will be happily binge-watching as many sewers, knitters, patternmakers, and designers as I can. They are the backbone of this industry.

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Looking for Something to Binge Watch? Try Fashion's Behind-the-Scenes Videos - Vogue.com
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