Ambition, wealth, shock and betrayal… The ingredients of Luxe, la fabrication du rêve, a documentary series broadcast on September 27 and 28 by Culturebox, the France Télévisions channel, are those of the best sagas. Cleverly nicknamed “the Game of Thrones of fashion”, the program can indeed boast of rhythmic production and music with dramatic accents.
Above all, it brings together characters hungry for power: first, a “wolf in cashmere” (Bernard Arnault, CEO of LVMH) and a disruptive “lion” (François Pinault, director of PPR, now Kering) who make luxury, a thriving and voracious industry. Facing them: a confident designer, Tom Ford, who, at Gucci, will prove that we can dust off an aging brand. And, in his wake, John Galliano, Alexander McQueen and Marc Jacobs, Anglo-Saxon creators, inventive, fanciful and egotistical, who dilute the pressure in the mirage of drugs.
Based on archives and testimonies from key players (former executives of LVMH and PPR, hatmaker Stephen Jones, journalist Tim Blanks, stylist Carine Roitfeld, etc.), the series describes the way in which fashion has tipped into overheating, crash-marrying money and sex. “Optimize”, “target” a “customer segment”…
Financial and marketing vocabulary creeps in everywhere, when “porn” is described as chic. Listed on the stock exchange, the sector is attempting hostile takeover bids, lining itself up with lawyers, multiplying spectacular fashion shows in the hope of selling bags. But, between the suicide of Alexander McQueen, the anti-Semitic belchings of John Galliano and the exhaustion of Marc Jacobs, the frenzy turned to tragedy between 2010 and 2013, constituting for the series a fall as abrupt as the rise was.