The Fervent Rise of Fashion Films

It’s turning out to be the year of the fashion show. We don’t mean runway, either—a spate of scintillating new television dramas about vaunted fashion houses started streaming this year. It began when Apple TV+ debuted “The New Look,” a Todd Kessler–directed series that chronicles rival couture designers Coco Chanel and Christian Dior navigating wartime quandaries to mixed reviews. A miniseries about the late Chanel and Fendi creative director Karl Lagerfeld then hit Hulu, further untangling the threads of one of fashion history’s most complicated characters. The latest, the soon-to-debut “La Maison,” also on Apple TV+, doesn’t seek to set any figurehead’s narrative straight. Rather, it offers Succession-style drama through power struggles and ego battles playing out within a beleaguered dynasty.

It’s difficult to pin down an exact explanation for the sudden rise in fashion-focused viewing, but there seems to be an interest in seeing exactly how the sausage—or the $7,000 couture gown, or the 840-page September issue—is made, especially in an industry that otherwise prides itself on its opacity and mystique. After decades of staging runway shows during New York Fashion Week, Oscar de la Renta opted to release a documentary, “A Sense of Beauty,” that follows co-creative directors Laura Kim and Fernando Garcia as they finish the label’s pre-fall 2024 collection. The hour-long film, which is streaming on YouTube, whisks viewers from a Midtown Manhattan office to a hand-beading factory in India to highlight the meticulous detail and handicraft imbued within each garment. Other recent films enter the minds of icons like Diane von Furstenberg, Martin Margiela, and John Galliano. You likely won’t find that while doom-scrolling through behind-the-scenes NYFW footage on Instagram.

Alex Bolen, Oscar de la Renta’s CEO, says producing a film is a better investment than a runway show and helps immortalize the collection. “A Sense of Beauty” cost $450,000 to produce, which pales in comparison to ephemeral runway shows that can set labels back upwards of a million dollars, plus the added value of not “being one of the 100 shows in a week that people have forgotten about five minutes later,” he tells the WSJ. On that note, there’s even fast fashion fodder, too.