Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread features the most seductive couture gowns and the best fashion show in popular culture.
The Forces of Fashion event this year, which takes place on October 16, is devoted to the drama, art, and historical impact of the catwalk. To celebrate, the editors of Vogue are presenting their top-rated imaginary fashion shows from television and film across the years.
Phantom Thread, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson in 2017, is one of the most romantic romances ever portrayed in a motion picture. More significantly, though, it is one of the most accurate portrayals of the pain and exhilaration of working in the fashion industry for the purposes of this book.
Daniel Day-Lewis plays the role of Reynolds Woodcock, a 1950s haute couture dress designer whose precise lines reflect his own hard-charging personality. Because of this, Woodcock’s daily activities are seen through a unique lens that highlights the peculiarities of being a creative genius, such as the significance of peaceful breakfast time, when the designer occasionally draws or otherwise gets ready in his thoughts for the creative chores of the day. Anderson also takes great care to depict the fitting and construction of a garment as well as the inner workings of Woodcock’s couture studio, where he is surrounded by his staff of tailors and seamstresses, all dressed in similar white jackets.
For the part, Day-Lewis, one of the best actors alive and with a remarkable sense of personal style, apparently trained for a whole year in the craft of clothing fabrication, eventually making his own recreation of a Balenciaga dress. (Day-Lewis also selected Reynolds’s outfit from the character’s closet while filming.)As was customary at the time, he hosts an exhibition at his town house, which doubles as his residence and studio, where he shows Woodcock’s most recent collection. Models wearing the designer’s designs glide slowly past, each holding a number that corresponds to the look they are wearing, before an audience of society women sat in individual chairs in a semicircle shape inside two rooms. Backstage, it’s a familiar commotion, albeit much reduced from backstage at contemporary events. We get peeks of the models applying their own cosmetics, switching up their looks, and then approaching Woodcock to get his last approval before entering the room with the guests. Woodcock adjusts hats and reties capes.
In the middle of this well-known flurry of activity, we come upon a singularly tender moment. Vicky Krieps’s Alma, Woodcock’s new love interest, is captured on camera by Anderson as she puts on a pearl necklace, walks up to him, making a warm smile appear on the designer’s face, and makes her first turn through the rooms; she is dressed in a red velvet dress with a voluminous A-line silhouette and apron-like lace appliqués on front, which are reminiscent of the homemade uniform she wore as a waitress when she and Woodcock first met. As she moves between rooms, Woodcock turns and peers through the peephole in the door closest to him, acting as an analog equivalent of the backstage monitor.
The designer’s real and metaphorical eye is the only subject of the camera, and in a few moments, we witness his creative uneasiness change to contentment and ultimately adoration for Alma. She knows he’s observing her, so as she leaves the room, she keeps her eyes glued to the spyhole. It is a flawless two and a half minute sequence set to the sounds of Schubert’s Piano Trio No. 2. It is gently seductive and little tragic in its wholesomeness.
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