An ever-upholding self-importance challenge portrait of a dyed-in-the-annals sartorial icon, “Diane von Furstenberg: Lady in Cost” is an interesting sufficient documentary for the small display however not sufficiently big to advantage something extra. That’s applicable, because the film heads to Hulu two and a half weeks after its Tribeca Competition premiere in a New York theater. Administrators Sharmeen Obaid-Chiony and Trish Dalton’s movie is a hagiographic survey of the life and profession of the Jewish lady born in Belgium who married into German royalty, grew to become a princess, and began a trend empire that included the invention of the now-ubiquitous wrap gown. With speaking heads together with Hillary Clinton and Oprah Winfrey, the documentary emerges extra as agitprop for feminist galvanizing within the months up towards an election wherein ladies’s rights are on the slab.
Although actually spikier and with a zero-fucks-given, indecorous lack of platitudes is speaking head Fran Lebowitz, proud New Yorker and sardonic lesbian and precise good buddy of Furstenberg’s. And Furstenberg’s rich mates are many, and former and nearly lovers much more. The documentary strikes linearly via Furstenberg’s life, stopping and beginning alongside the way in which with the sexist strains of questioning she obtained on late evening and daytime TV, from even David Letterman to Regis Philbin, observing that an older Furstenberg seems totally different than her youthful self.
Furstenberg, along with her frizzy, blown-out hair and color-popped frocks — ones which briefly fade away into Susan Sontag-esque shoulder pads and darkish pleated pants throughout a quick love affair with a controlling Parisian author — was a sight to see. And she or he did stand as an emblem of feminism, of chafing in opposition to the seams particularly within the ‘70s when ladies had been requested to androgenize their seems to get out of the kitchen and forward within the office. However then there was Furstenberg, whose profession started below the tutelage of Vogue trend editor Diana Freeland, championing femininity, and silhouettes, pastels, and prints.
“Lady in Cost” argues that Furstenberg’s lodestar at all times was a form of feminist pursuit, even because the documentary contorts her life story to retroactively imbue it with extra of a feminist narrative than it maybe consciously had: Was occurring QVC, the place then fashionistas dared not go, and promoting the 2023 equal to $2.6 million in two hours in 1992 a sleight of feminism, or the product of capitalism? Simply since you’ve bought Clinton’s endorsement doesn’t imply it’s the previous. However perhaps, for a Jewish immigrant designer who fled a homosexual German husband for the American dream, it could possibly be each.
And “Lady in Cost” is most piquant when it’s dishing on the various loves of Diane von Furstenberg. “I’m 76 occurring 300,” Furstenberg says at one level, and 300 can be in all probability the variety of lovers, women and men, she’s had over her three-quarters of a century alive. Her son, Prince Alexander von Fürstenberg, in a single on-camera interview, mentions the existence of a “checklist,” presumably an inventory of all of the celebrities she’s bedded. There was Ryan O’Neal and Warren Beatty on the identical day (making Furstenberg’s conquest nearly the inverse of that epic true yarn of when Carly Simon’s therapist advised the singer that she was not the primary affected person that day to say she’d slept with Warren Beatty … that day). Then there was Mick Jagger and David Bowie who collectively propositioned Furstenberg for a threesome, who turned them down. She was not afraid of her wishes, which meant not being afraid of additionally dialing them down.
Which was uncommon. In the course of the off-and-on years with Diller earlier than they finally married in 2001, she as soon as left him for that Parisian author but in addition for a seaside bum in Bali. Her first nice love was Prince Egon von Fürstenberg, who turned out to be homosexual however stayed shut with Diane and their two kids up via his demise of AIDS problems in 2004. “Lady in Cost” weaves a well-known thread from the overwhelmingly, brazenly flowing carnal power exploding out of Studio 54 to the sexual demise knell of AIDS hitting within the very early Eighties. Anybody who’s seen documentaries about popular culture spanning the ‘60s via the ‘80s — and particularly so far as intercourse is worried — has seen this very montage, from Quaalude-fueled extra to lesions, hospital beds, and the tip of the sexual revolution. “Lady in Cost” affords no new insights about the place ladies and feminism match into that framework, although the homosexual males Furstenberg cherished had been all affected by it.
Most compellingly, “Lady in Cost” reveals the disaster of consciousness Furstenberg had round coming to phrases along with her mom being a survivor of Auschwitz. Furstenberg didn’t give it some thought till late into life — and her response was to take her children to Bali and roll round within the sand with the attractive Brazilian seaside boy. A much less fawning documentary portrait would scrutinize this episode, one notch on a life’s bedpost, with a cannier, extra playful eye. Hints of a extra macabre inquiry are there, too, in Diane von Furstenberg’s personal addresses to the filmmakers, revealing how she thinks about demise every single day. And at all times has her complete life.
However “Lady in Cost” is a you-go-girl, grab-your-sexuality-by-the-bodice portrait of, effectively, a girl in cost, not a artistic trend documentary within the vein of “McQueen” or “The September Concern,” which discovered methods to seize the spirit of their topics via their formal fashion. This Diane Von Furstenberg is loads participating, however as a tribute to the girl who reinvented the fashionable gown, it doesn’t reinvent something itself.
Grade: C+
“Diane von Furstenberg: Lady in Cost” opened the 2024 Tribeca Competition. The movie premieres on Hulu on Friday, July 25.