Wanted: phantom manicurist
To say that Phantom Thread, the Oscarnominated new film from Paul Thomas Anderson and Daniel Day-lewis, is splitting the jury here on the fashion desk is an understatement.
We’re no movie critics (we’ll leave that in the very capable hands of The Telegraph’s Robbie Collin), but we have our views. Yet another perverse pandering to the male creative ego is one. A weird but wonderful subversion of the usual male-female power equation is another. It’s the warped tale of Fifties couturier Reynolds Woodcock (what kind of name is that for a contemporary of Hardy Amies and Norman Hartnell?) and his strange relationships with women. So far so predictable, except that it’s not.
Thomas Anderson and Daylewis (in what is reportedly his last film) researched Fifties fashion forensically. It’s partly this appreciation of the army of highly skilled sewers and cutters that makes this film so absorbing. If nothing else, it’s a love letter to the sublime manifestation of craft. DDL even learnt how to make button holes and, he told an audience last weekend, created a dress for his wife, which she loyally wears. The film is beautiful to look at and hypnotically evocative of the rigid glamour and threadbare austerity that were distinctive hallmarks of the period, and it kept us talking and disagreeing for days. Job done. If you don’t come out wanting to banish the shoddy things from your life, you weren’t paying attention.
But there is one major plausibility barrier and I can’t understand why Robbie and co haven’t spotted it. Critics, I refer you to DDL’S fingernails. They’re dirty. So much effort expended on getting everything right – you can see the chapping on DDL’S hands where the needles would have pierced him – and then they get this wrong. A couturier of Woodcock’s obsessive fastidiousness would never have had grime under his nails.
I hate to take on the might of the film establishment by finding fault with The World’s Greatest Living Actor, but his method just doesn’t cut it here. If he’d like to step up his game – and there are rumours that he’s thinking of setting up his own label once he retires from acting – he’s welcome to spend a few months shadowing us here at The Telegraph’s fashion desk. We’ll even find you a great manicurist, Daniel.