"Take My Picture", the Garage Magazine film directed by Dasha Zhukova and produced by Shala Monroque that promised to "dissect" the street style circus currently gripping the fashion industry aired this weekend. Like many followers of fashion, I was looking forward to thoughtful insights into this peculiar phenomenon that has seemingly everyone (including veteran fashion critic Suzy Menkes) either pondering its significance for the industry or lamenting how things used to be.
There were a few insights (largely thanks to Style.com's veteran fashion critic Tim Blanks) but what Garage has given us is essentially a film produced by insiders in which other insiders are interviewed about outsiders trying to get a piece of the action (presumably with the hopes of eventually becoming insiders themselves). In case you need any evidence of the cozy relationship between filmmaker and subjects, Phil Oh (whose street style images appear on American Vogue's website) was interviewed whilst taking a bubble bath.
If you're really trying to understand the phenomenon, shouldn't you be talking to the outsiders too? Surely, those throngs of anonymous young (and not so young) bloggers, photographers and hangers on that come from far and wide just to hang around the show venues to photograph show goers or be photographed themselves have something to say about this phenomenon. What brought them there? What do they hope to achieve? What do they get out of it? Alas, we'll never know as the filmmakers never bothered to ask them preferring instead to interview the usual cast of characters. Overall, the film struck me more as a teaser than a finished product. So much for "dissection".
Sincerely,
The Luxe Chronicles
I concur. I watched the film and thought "is this the first part of a series?"
Posted by: CDSP | Tuesday, April 09, 2013 at 17:42