Girls In Films

Last week at Cinespace, fashion blogger Diane Pernet and photographer Dino Dinco debuted the You Wear It Well fashion film festival, presenting an opportunity for L.A. fashionistas to see rarely screened films and get inside the minds behind the mode. It was a very haute affair for the City of Angels (not a skatewear video in sight), and the event brought out stylist Arianne Phillips and her pal Jeremy Scott, Booth Moore from the L.A. Times, and Cameron Silver of Decades. Viewers sat through three hours of shorts that went from silly ("Hello Kitty's Birthday," featuring a model in a big papier mache head) to sublime ("Diversity is a Form of Wealth," Nick Knight's moving look at a John Galliano runway show that used circus performers and regular folk instead of models on the catwalk). Liam Sullivan's goofy ode to "Shoes" won the audience award, and although I cracked up along with everybody else I couldn't help but notice that the fetishized footwear was more Payless than Prada. Jeremy Scott's soap opera spoof "Starring" deliberately trampled all over that line, and his A-list cast included Tori Spelling, Asia Argento, China Chow, Lisa Marie, and Amber Valletta in faux commercials for "Couture" - "when I get cramps."

I cast my vote for Ruben Toledo's "Fashionation" (still of Karl Lagerfeld and the Chanel team, pictured above), a whimsical, animated history of French fashion that began by defining couture, ran through the alphabet from Azzedine Alaia to Balenciaga to Dior to Gaultier to Sonia Rykiel (who said that "the sweater is a part of my soul") and and finished with "Zee end." It was absolutely adorable, and an excellent primer too! Diane Pernet's "Adventure of Pleasure (Gumball Rally)" was a documentary style look at designer Eley Kishimoto's participation in the Gumball Rally car race.

Although many of the films were international, Pernet's partner Dino Dinco said he wanted to kick off the event in the capital of cinema. "It would have been almost too obvious to start it in New York," he said. "Plus, the interesting fashion is starting on the West Coast." Of course, we already knew that, right?

--------