Dior and I

Raf Simons is put at the head of a fashion house. He had worked in menswear and had never done haute couture. He has very little time: he must prepare his first collection in eight weeks, work that normally takes months. He enters the atelier. There are seamstresses there who have worked for years; some in the same place for forty. Simons does not speak French and communication runs through an interpreter. The team is distant at first. Then the work begins and goes on day and night. The day of the show approaches. Frédéric Tcheng directs. Raf Simons, Pieter Mulier and the atelier team appear. It is an American and French co-production. The real subject is not the designer but the atelier; the narrative puts the workers in the sewing rooms at its centre and names them. Passages from Christian Dior's memoirs are read across the film, setting past and present side by side. The documentary also shows the commercial side; client requests disrupt the atelier's schedule. A house is covered entirely in flowers for the show venue and the preparation is shown in detail. Simons's state before the show is not hidden; the man is tense and the pressure visible. Its limit is access; the documentary was made with the house's permission and the critical distance is limited. Who it is for: viewers who like fashion documentary and stories of craft. Who it is not for: the subject is narrow, there is no critical view, and it is closed to anyone uninterested.