Actor and social media personality Celeste Barber gained notoriety by highlighting the strangely unnatural imagery of celebrity marketing and fashion. Her public persona revolves around being “relevable” to “ordinary” women. Why is it that style can penetrate our psyche but deeply—and if it does, why do you think it’s so frequently viewed as shallow ?—is a problem that she is the ideal number to tease aside.
This is a challenging issue for the typical standard market pop history documentary. I was soon intrigued by the way The Manner We Wore is framed in terms of the regular use of clothing as someone who wrote a book about the common experience of wearing clothes only to have it relegated to the specialized “fashion” sections at the backs of bookstores.
However, I was already skeptical of its all-encompassing “we.” Was it really encompass everything that garments means to all Australians in only three hour-long episodes? Director Nel Minchin ( Firestarter, Making Muriel, Matilda & Me ) gives it a shot in an impressive manner.
The structure is being pushed
The Way We Wore uses the well-known ABC pop-history movies ‘ “narrator + archive footage + talking mind” genre. It was very likely a sequentially organized victory lap of archives material intended to evoke pleasant memories.
However, it deviates from that structure in some soon intriguing ways. Although it’s a well-known video trope to show an interviewee settling into their seat before introducing them, Minchin uses the technique consistently and unintentionally to undermine the notion that this is an authoritative history account.
So, she captures the moment when hair and makeup artist Luke Karakia, who lightly shares that Elaine was a household name in his Indian area even though he was only two at the time, is getting ready for her meeting with Bundjalung/Arakwal type Eleanor George, the first Indigenous Vogue Australia include girl.
I was ready and waiting for Barber to just stroll around and make some gestures in front of the camera before leaving to voice. However, Minchin provides Barber with plenty of on space to remind us that dressing up is unavoidably an identity performance. She switches between a direct voiceover, silly, self-deprecating real passages, personal vignettes, and quickly analytical reflections.
Primped
Each show starts with Barber getting ready and being followed around the set by makeup artists and wardrobe staff while he casually addresses an offscreen Minchin. Barber predicts that editing magic may be added afterwards, but Minchin abandons her and whispers urgently,” Cut to Tom Ford.”
Barber would just snap her fingers and get herself somewhere else or dressed differently in a crappier line. However, in this case, putting a lamp on the “finger-snap makeover” trope challenges viewers ‘ preconceived notions that alterations work some sort of transformative magic. ( A clip of Sarah Snook in the film The Dressmaker underlines this point. )
The units are fun, to. Many of the talking faces are filmed in a pale square strewn with dressmakers ‘ forms draped in swags of natural- colored fabric. Barber also appears in front of hanging banners of cloth with holes cut out of them – home sewing aficionados did suddenly accept these damaging spaces as the pattern pieces for the bright outfits Barber is wearing.
But is it incisive?
A video like this usually chooses one of two pathways. It you trace an commercial history of fashion development through shifting market trends and the rise and fall of brands and labels, which assumes that these industry- level decisions trickle down to regular people – as The Devil Wears Prada notably described. Or it can show a historical record through style articles, advertisements, films and TV shows, subcultures, models and celebrities – the idea that what we wear’ bubbles up’ from what we see around us.
The Method We Wore attempt to do both. Each season unfolds chronologically in a way I found irritatingly basic – while watching, I frequently found myself wanting to point out when essential cases seemed to be either omitted or glossed over, or championed as uniquely era- determining when they really could n’t get separated from wider changes at a given period. But then the line goes on to fill these deficiencies in early shows. But to get the most out of this display, you really need to see the whole thing.
Episode one is a social history of fashion media – a great glass through which to consider how people learn about clothes, and even about the idea of’ style’ itself as a dense fantasy world. We hear from decorated mask and manufacturing custom Catherine Martin, Vogue Australia‘s Edwina McCann, fashion journalist Glynis Traill- Nash, and of course, former magazine editor – and presently ABC chair – Ita Buttrose.
Episode two presents an straightforward intelligent warning that garments has always been democratic, providing both pleasure and retribution for groups such as First Nations people, Muslims and sexual minorities.
The line ‘ attention to inclusion and exclusion through clothing is its greatest strength, and it holds space brilliantly for insights from interviewees who include Zimbabwean- born journalist and filmmaker Santilla Chingaipe, Awabakal model Charlee Fraser, Marrithiyal designer Paul McCann, Gamilaroi/Torres Strait writer- performer Nakkiah Lui, and the Palestinian- Asian designer of the ‘ burqini’, Aheda Zanetti.
Undervalued
The final event explores fashion as a business business, asking why it has been therefore undervalued. Next year style put$ 27.2 billion into the regional economy – more than the beer and wine market– and it employs more people than mine. Barber frequently emphasises the level of American fashion consumption, considering our little population. The phrase ‘ per head’ does a lot of big lifting.
The series follows the growth of department stores and boutiques, trend weeks, and business showcases. It’s all the more spectacular that fashion businesses you thrive and develop in such a tiny market.
We hear about well-known companies like Collette Dinnigan, Zimmermann, Alex Perry, Morrissey Edmiston, Akira Isogawa, Ken Done, Carla Zampatti, and Camilla Franks, but we also learn about Baht Williams ‘ suppressed Indian past and the danger posed by strong style.
The collection does occasionally use the term “iconic” a little too loosely. And it gives in to the urge to single out specific people as “fashion explorers” who “revolutionized” what we wear, like swimmer and comedian Annette Kellerman, Flamingo Park manufacturers Jenny Kee and Linda Jackson, or rock designer Jenny Bannister. These assertions undermine the more general historical justifications.
A Ken Done doona include is much more likely to be recognized by the average person than a garish, floating Akira evening dress. However, as Barber insists, “fashion is the democratic, the sociable, and the business world,” and this set is a thoughtful introduction to how it also influences our memories and individual histories.
On November 21 at 8 p.m., The Method We Wore airs on ABC Television and ABC iview, with all incidents available to stream there.