Four days to watch fashion as culture

To publicise fashion as culture. This is the ambitious purpose behind In-edit Productions’ Moritz Feed Dog, which started in Barcelona in 2015. In its fourth edition, the first fashion documentary festival in our country consolidates its position and not only attracts fashionistas, but also a secular audience who is in love with cinema or even committed to social activism. Round tables, debates and talks organized around each projected documentary –from March 22 to 25 at the Aribau Club of Barcelona– confirm the vision of Charo Mora, the festival’s director: “Today you can’t talk about fashion without a critical view”.

Among this year’s titles, the main one, devoted to Vivienne Westwood, stands out. Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist (2017), by the director Lorna Tucker, talks about the British artist and designer who has never inhibited her punk and activist DNA. Social criticism is provided in Machines (2016), director Rahul Jain’s first film which, with a succinct dialogue, shows the cruel reality of the textile industry from a factory in India. For its part, Qu’est-ce que la haute couture? (2016), by Loïc Prigent, brings us closer to the creative and tailoring process of haute couture, so we can understand why a dress can be worth €60,000. On profiles, we have House of Z (2017), by Sandy Chronopoulos, which reflects on the rise and fall of one of fashion’s spoilt children; and the story of the first makeup artist star, in Kevyn Aucoin: Beauty and the Beast in Me (Lori Kaye, 2017).

But one of the highlights of this fourth edition will undoubtedly be We Margiela, by Menna Laura Meijer. The work avoids the inconvenience (or incentive) of the protagonist not showing himself in front of cameras, giving voice to the firm’s co-founder, Jenny Meirens, and part of the team that created the no-label appeal.