Fashion on film: Norman Parkinson and T-shirts
In the documentary aka Norman Parkinson, the photographer describes a scene fashion buffs know very well: You’re thumbing through a fashion magazine quickly, and you turn back to study a picture. Something caught your imagination.
So it goes for the film about Parkinson, a British eccentric if ever there was one, with his twirly moustache, lucky beaded caps and unfailing eye for beauty, composition and intrigue.
The documentary, screening Friday and March 28 as part of the International Festival of Films on Art, draws you in slowly, with interviews with Grace Coddington, Jerry Hall and especially Carmen Dell’Orefice, who, at over age 80, is even more beautiful than when Parkinson shot her at age 17 in a strapless grey taffeta dress at the Plaza Hotel.
“My life is a search for beautiful women, and women, like Rome, are eternal,” said Parkinson, born Ronald Smith in Putney. He died in 1990 at age 76.
Parkinson shot models in exotic locations, with backdrops of temples or rice paddies, on city streets and in ballrooms, and he once photographed his wife riding an ostrich. The film makes you want to go back and look at his archive and compare it to today’s work, so digitized that Lena Dunham, shot for Vogue, had her home borough of Brooklyn digitally inserted as a backdrop.
Another fashion film on the festival’s schedule, The Man Who Shot Beautiful Women, explores Erwin Blumenfeld’s fetish for beauty and his enthralling, often surrealist works. (The Parkinson and Blumenfeld movies are packaged together; screenings are at 9 p.m. Friday and 4 p.m. March 28 at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1379 Sherbrooke St. W.) Also up for fashion fans are La Chemise Polo and films on illustrator René Gruau and photographer Robyn Beeche. Meanwhile, 100% T-Shirt, a film on the history of the ubiquitous garment, opens Friday at Cinéma du Parc, 3575 Parc Ave. The documentary, directed by Kaveh Nabatian, features American Apparel’s Dov Charney, Sugar Sammy and Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry, among others. Nabatian says the doc follows the life cycle of the T-shirt, covering everything from its production to culture and manufacturing ethics. “After you watch this movie, you’ll be able to make better decisions about how you buy a T-shirt, and you’ll look at T-shirts in a different way,” he says in a news release.
The doc also has a web platform on which to share your T-shirt stories and enter a design competition, at 100tshirt. net.