Ready-to-Wear. - movie reviews

Christian Century, March 8, 1995 by Margaret R. Miles

Altman makes his point. Despite his professed reticence to criticize fashion, he has drawn an all too familiar picture of Vanity Fair. Like John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress (in which the term Vanity Fair first appeared), Ready-to-Wear is a morality tale.

What does not appear onscreen in this "exposed" of fashion? Anything that might have humanized these shallow people. No one has pain. There is no mention of the way AIDS has wreaked havoc in the fashion world. Sex occurs frequently and with little provocation, but safe sex has apparently never been heard of. Similarly, there is no mention of the eating disorders that are a routine part of many models' lives.

Even the death of a husband, lover and colleague cannot stop the show. Isn't it a bit too convenient that no one was saddened about the death of the "murdered" man? He just wasn't a "nice guy." It is also frightening to realize that the people represented as arguably the least talented and articulate are a black designer and two black models.

Is the fact that Altman was permitted to film the spring 1994 collections supposed to be taken as further evidence of the fashion industry's lack of integrity--it thinks any publicity is good publicity? There is an irreducible contradiction in Altman's claim that the "reality level of the film is very high" (it was shot "like a documentary") and his derisive representation of high fashion. Documentary sticks as close as possible to reporting; Altman's film is an acknowledged caricature.

It's a cheap shot to ridicule people that most Americans--Altman's target audience--already think of as superficial and vacuous. If the film were a documentary rather than a send-up, it would let film audiences see that, in the highly stressed world of high fashion, as with any other collection of human beings, there are some deeply felt, enduring friendships, some people honor their committed relationships, many feel pain, and at least some people are generous.

Ready-to-Wear is a farce, but Altman has decided that the fashion world is a farce as well, and he uses an old motif to rub it in--the emperor's new clothes. In the last show of the event, Simone Lowenthal (Anouk Aimee) sends her models onto the runway naked, with little makeup and no gimmicks. Within the film, this scene is supposed to exhibit humorously the bankruptcy of fashion. The audience within the film gets the joke and laughs, after the first shock. Then they stand up and applaud. But the models--real runway models, young women not accustomed to exhibiting their naked bodies--take it seriously. Neither ashamed nor strutting, they are simply there, walking the runway in their bodies rather than in the clothing they usually exhibit. Even after the film's tedious and often adolescent satire, this is an amazing moment. There--after all the strenuous endeavors of fashion to embellish, conceal and deny it--is the body.

No matter how unclothed it may be on television, in movies and in advertising, the female body is always "dressed," posed and presented for a reason--to sell carry or alcohol or sex. In the eye of this beholder, the shocking beauty of those unadorned young bodies transcended Altman's use of them. While I deplore the filmmaker's use of young women's bodies to communicate his message, I nevertheless saw them as quite astonishing and wonderful.