Forget *The Devil Wears Prada*: These Are the Real Fashion Films

From Chanel to Tom Ford, from Saint Laurent to Karl Lagerfeld, the way they look on camera tells all kinds of fashion stories.

The Devil Wears Prada (and its stills) has been used so often that it is everywhere. Most people who dream of working at a fashion magazine, a business overpraised as "the best job in the world," have seen this slightly saccharine feel-good drama. But is the fashion world really like that? What kind of people are designers? How do they work? How did the famous ones reach the position they hold today?

Films always heighten real life, and we can't promise that the films below explain everything. But watching the fashion world's stories and the work of big-name designers through different directors' eyes and different visual styles offers something that dry written accounts and brief glimpses of the runway do not.

Two More Documentaries on Saint Laurent

Compared with last year's two biopics, the documentary form may be more honest and plain. The best-known documentaries about Saint Laurent were both directed by David Teboul and both released in 2002: YSL: A Life in Fashion (a portrait of the great designer's life) and Yves Saint Laurent: The Birth of a Legend. The first is probably better known. In 2 hours and 42 minutes it runs from childhood memories to moments of glory, from design sketches to runway gowns, and stands as a documentary record of Saint Laurent. But its habit of filming every last detail can also put viewers to sleep more easily than last year's two biopics.

If you want a better feel for the character of Saint Laurent's work, the films he designed costumes for may be a better route. Saint Laurent was to Catherine Deneuve what Givenchy was to Audrey Hepburn. In the 1960s and 70s, almost all of Deneuve's screen costumes came from the YSL fashion house. They include classics such as La Chamade (1968), Mississippi Mermaid (La sirène du Mississippi, 1969) and Liza (1972). The Hunger (1983) was the last film for which Saint Laurent personally made Deneuve's costumes.

The most classic of them is probably Belle de Jour, which was also their first film together.

Two-Thirds of Coco Chanel: Coco Before Chanel and Coco Chanel

On the lead's looks alone, we lean toward the version starring Audrey Tautou (2009); her face and bearing say enough. On plot, though, the 2008 version, released in Chinese simply as Chanel, wins more hearts. The two films draw quite different Chanels. Tautou's Chanel is free-spirited and goes her own way, though much of the story dwells on her dependence on men and her life on country estates. Barbora Bobulova's Chanel is more reserved, a woman pushed forward by fate together with her clothes.

Coco Chanel scores slightly higher in online ratings. Two other films on Chanel are also worth watching: La Vie en Rose and Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky.

Raf Simons at Dior

In 2011, Dior fired its chief designer John Galliano over offensive remarks, and for the next year who would replace him was the talk of the fashion world. In April 2012, after round after round of screening, Raf Simons won and became Dior's new leader. Yet Simons, formerly chief designer at Jil Sander, never seemed to be Dior's first choice. In seniority and experience he lagged far behind rivals such as Marc Jacobs, Jason Wu and Stefano Pilati. Once the news was confirmed, the industry's doubts never stopped. Time would give the new chief no extra grace: at Paris haute couture week in July he would hand in his first assignment in the job, and you can imagine how much rode on it.

Dior and I is a documentary about everything behind Raf Simons's women's haute couture collection for Paris haute couture week in 2012. Director Frédéric Tcheng watches from the sidelines and records all that passed between Simons and Dior in those three months: the clash between Simons's steady minimalism and the Dior house style, and the friction as Simons and Dior's production team learned to work together. All this gave the show an unusual weight and gives the film plenty to watch.

The film premiered last April at the Tribeca Film Festival. Since April this year it has opened in cinemas in North America, Australia and elsewhere, to a good response. It holds a respectable 7.1 on IMDb, an 80% "fresh" rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes and an audience score of 83%. A Washington Post critic said Dior and I is not "a marketing video for Dior" but "a truly fascinating work."

The DVD goes on sale on August 10, so anyone interested in the subject can look out for it then.

The Last Emperor: Valentino

Valentino announced his retirement in September 2007, and this film came out in 2008, a fitting tribute to his "abdication." Shooting took two years, and the film was cut from 270 hours of footage.

Director Matt Tyrnauer is also a special correspondent for Vanity Fair. He treats his audience as experts in fashion history and, using the observational style of direct cinema, shows Valentino's emperor-like life: how charming his gardens and castles are, how lavish his holidays, how many celebrities turn up to his shows, his "coronation" party and his 45th anniversary. Yet apart from one red dress, you can hardly recall what Valentino's signature works are. Tyrnauer says openly: "The film tells some very private things, including what I see as the love story between Valentino and Giancarlo Giammetti."

The Life Philosophy of Fashion's "Kaiser Karl"

Making a documentary about a designer still in his job is bound to be hard. Telling his career story risks bias, and there is no grand summing-up of a life to end on. The film's greatest strength may be Karl Lagerfeld himself, who is frank and genuine. He shares freely, letting us see the real man behind the face that always wears dark glasses and looks a little haughty: "Don't make too much of the individual; there are billions of other people in the world."

While recording his daily working rhythm, the film also takes in his philosophy of life. On taking over Chanel, on dreams and his mother, on sex work and marriage... he has his own view of each.

The September Issue and Funny Face: Inside Fashion Magazines

If you find The Devil Wears Prada, whose editor is modeled on VOGUE's Anna Wintour, too much of a fairy tale, try this documentary instead. It was three years in the planning. The crew moved into VOGUE's headquarters in Times Square, New York, followed preparations for the September 2007 issue for eight months and cut the film from more than 300 hours of footage.

Director R.J. Cutler said in an interview: "I knew very little about Anna Wintour. Seen another way, that was my advantage. Because I knew nothing about her and was a stranger to the fashion world, I could become the director of this film purely out of curiosity and fascination."

This film was the first to truly strip the mystery from fashion magazines. The job is not just wearing beautiful clothes to fashion weeks; it demands everything you have. Media impact, public influence and how readers will receive the work all have to be weighed and argued over again and again.

Funny Face, starring Hepburn, goes to the other extreme. Its story is set among a fashion magazine editor, a photographer, models and the like, but the film itself is a romantic musical, and it feels made to measure for Hepburn. Still, no Hepburn film can be discussed without Givenchy. The unmissable clothes in Funny Face all came from his hands. If you just want to look at a beauty in splendid clothes, Breakfast at Tiffany's and Sabrina are also worth seeing.

A Dreamer? Tom Ford's Perfectionism

There is only one documentary about Tom Ford. It runs just 40 minutes, and no subtitles for it can be found in China. Its original English title is Visionaries: Tom Ford, and the Chinese rendering, "Dreamer," looks like a mistranslation. Ford makes 16 ready-to-wear collections a year, and his perfectionism and love of the work show a formidable ability to get things done. How could he lose himself in idle dreams? Directed by Michael Bonfiglio, the documentary records the American designer's working life from fashion week in September 2010 to February 2011.

The film shows a new side of him: not just the glamorous surface, not just the perfectionist and workaholic, but also his depression, his crises and the rebuilding of his career. It even reveals that he showers three to five times a day. When he left Gucci he felt he had lost everything: "I remember the day I left Gucci. It was in April. I went home, drew all the curtains and went straight to sleep. When I woke up the next day, I looked at my calendar, which should have been full, and there was nothing on it. I felt lost. I didn't know who I was, and I didn't know what I could do."

A later film, A Single Man, his directorial debut, is evidence of his midlife crisis. On what he has decided will be the last day of his life, the protagonist, George Falconer, still goes out in meticulous formal dress. Ford himself has said: "When I'm sad, I arm myself by dressing up." The film's sets were designed by the team behind Mad Men, and it rates highly online. After its premiere it competed for the Golden Lion at the 66th Venice Film Festival, and its star, Colin Firth, was nominated for best actor at the Oscars and the Golden Globes.

Who Made LV: Marc Jacobs

In October 2013, Marc Jacobs announced he was leaving the LV group, where he had worked for 16 years, to focus on his own label. When he was appointed LV's creative director in 1997, the brand had no clothing line and no It bag; everything started from zero. Sixteen years later, LV had 459 stores in 64 countries and 4 factories in Italy making nothing but its shoes, and its annual revenue had reached 7 million euros, half of the whole group's profit.

Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton, released in 2007, is an autobiographical documentary that mainly follows his preparations for the Spring/Summer 2007 ready-to-wear show. It takes in Jacobs's studio, LV's fabric store, the workshop and the backstage of the show: how pieces are designed and patterns cut, how different materials produce different effects, and how a creative idea travels from macarons to an LV leather bag. There are also, of course, details of the designer's own life.

If you are a devoted fan of Marc Jacobs or LV, it is worth a look, though there are no subtitles online at the moment and even a copy of the film is hard to find.

Great 1920s Style: The Great Gatsby

With Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead, the box office was never in doubt. The film is also adapted from a literary classic, and its costumes give you plenty to look at: sequined drop-waist dresses at the parties, crisp, full-cut three-piece suits and the Tiffany jewels on the heroine's head all carry the style of 1920s America's Jazz Age. There are five versions of The Great Gatsby in all, but besides the new one, the only other with real influence is the 1974 version. It can't match the new film's cast or sets, but it has a warm, old-time charm, and its costumes were all designed by Ralph Lauren, which won it the Oscar for costume design at the 47th Academy Awards. GQ's March cover that year called the 1974 The Great Gatsby "the movie that influences what you wear." We recommend watching the old and new versions together.

Rococo in a Picture Frame: Marie Antoinette

Besides the much-loved Japanese manga The Rose of Versailles, there are 3 film versions of Queen Marie Antoinette's story; here we mean the 2006 one. Most short reviews call the plot empty, showy and dull, but if you know enough of the history and pay attention to the look of the Rococo court, it is still worth watching. Its costume designer, Milena Canonero, won the Oscar for best costume design at the 79th Academy Awards.

Released at the end of 2006, the film arguably set off a Rococo trend in fashion. In the Spring/Summer 2008 collections, big names such as D&G, Jean Paul Gaultier, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior and Alexander McQueen all showed Rococo looks.