SARAH CLYNE SUNDBERG'S GUILTY PLEASURES:
PRÊT-À-PORTER (1994)
Let me draw your attention to a film that perhaps isn't so much embarrassing as severely underappreciated. In my mid-teens my mind was similar to cheap sausage; pretty much anything went in. This included a gem unique to the early '90s — Elle Topmodel. I could not get enough of the comings and doings of Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista and Kate Moss (those were supermodels, lest you did not know). Meanwhile I had my angry-girl Doc Martens and parka-wearing indie cred to protect. I kept my obsession with fashion and models under wraps. Happily, there appeared a film that was art house enough so that I could see it without shame: Prêt-à-Porter. This was Robert Altman's send-up of the Paris fashion week and the fashion industry at large. At the time, I thought it was all fiction (though thrilling) and laughed my ass off at the prissy TV anchor, the egomaniac fashion designers, and the three scary-looking fashion editors, shriveled in their severe brown bobs. And last but not least, the two journalists who holed up in their hotel room, reporting the shows off the TV while screwing and getting trashed off the booze in the mini bar. That was before I knew the world well enough to realize that some things don't need to be made up. The movie also reads like a best-of '60s Euro movies with Sophia Loren, Anouk Aimée and Marcello Mastroianni knocking about on screen. I find that unlike Elle Topmodel, Prêt-à-Porter has only improved with age.
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