Ain’t No Fashionista Corner Boy-With Robert Altman‘s Ready To Wear In Mind   

 

DVD Review

 

By Sam Lowell

 

 

Ready To Wear, starring Sophia Loren, Marcel Marstrioanni and a cast of cameo performances by young and old actors, models, designers and assorted hangers-on, directed by Robert Altman, 1994    

 

Hey, I ain’t no haute couture guy, I ain’t no fashionista. Don’t give a damn about Pret-a-Porter or Seventh Avenue. Only time I was on that latter street was to score some righteous dope from a foxy ready to wear model that a friend of mine knew and who was foxy in other ways too. Hell growing up I was into flannel shirts (brown checkered ones), black chino pants, uncuffed, cool in my circle then as against nerds who wore cuffed pants if you can believe that, clunky work boots and midnight sunglasses wore especially after midnight. Not much more differently than I am attired these days except when for professional reason I suit up with the rest of the nine to five crowd.

 

Yeah, I was a faux “beat” guy, emulating Alan Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and the crowd a little after their time but before the “hippie” garb of my own generation took hold. That garb of mine which drew mostly weird stares in high school and few dates from girls except the ones who wore all black and were as alienated as I was, would translate not too badly in the later counter-cultural “fashion” statement. A time when lots of off-beat stuff got a reprieve for a moment before the world went back to business as usual and us, most of us with it.

 

So that is the sum of my fashion statement. Except I know what I like, know what I like when it comes to movies, you know films, and so if I see the name director Robert Altman attached to a film then I am in for a look almost despite the subject matter. Despite the fact that this film, Ready to Wear something of an oxymoron if you ask me if you looking even as a goof into the world of high fashion, deals exclusively with the going and coming during the annual Paris fashion week.           

 

The fact of the matter was in grabbing this one an all-star cast, an ensemble all-star cast as was Altman’s favorite way to address some subject he was interested all the way back to his classic Nashville and before, also made me inquisitive. Such old (okay, okay mature) stars as Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastrioanni as head-liners, young ones like Tim Robbins and Julia Roberts early in their careers and a whole who’s who of middle-level Hollywood film names added to the pot. Of course the plot line in this one as in many of Altman’s films (that Nashville again being an early model) is a throw away as he is looking at the foibles of whatever cultural gradient he is taking aim at. An alleged murder of a high ranking bureaucrat in the fashion industry by Marcello raising a “red flag,” a false red flag as it turned out in the end, was the vehicle used by Altman to take a “slice of life” look at the very high end of the fashion industry, the place where price does not matter, is not even mentioned in gentile society as long as people, the right people look in the right way. High fashion has gotten so much play lately, is “in”  with its own series of “reality” television shows showing a candid world how pieces of cloth get turned into, okay, okay beautiful if in some cases off-the-wall clothes.         

Along the way there are many sub-stories, some rather mundane like the wife of a retail buyer’s shopping spree. A few worthy of note like the “race” between three high-powered fashion editors for a well-known fashion magazines over acquiring a certain highly regarded fashion photographer and how he turned the tables on all three, a fling between Tim and Julia who wind up never leaving their hotel room the whole week and watching the thing on television between bouts of love-making, and the various sex-apades of the well-known designers and their consorts and lovers running the gamut from assumed heterosexual love to the well-known gay life epidemic in the industry and everything in between-and outside.     

Of course there was that silly over-riding faux murder plot that was so much hot air but the real star, the real story here is the incredible efforts necessary to produce high end fashion. That and the intense competition among the designers to be the new “next best thing” the thing that women talk about over lunch or at the water cooler although stuff they are very unlikely to buy whether they could afford to or not. This old “beat” flannel shirt, chinos, work boots guy has to admit that while some of the fashions might be over the top some of them are really works of art. This confirmed to me that the trend toward showing fashion trends past and present in art museums is the right move. If you like Robert Altman films or like high fashion this one is for you.  And no I still ain’t no fashionista-okay.