WORDS: ISOBEL THOMPSON
In France, there is a term that could have been invented for Carine Roitfeld herself: Jolie-Laide. Inevitably in English it loses much of its alluring charm and translates rather brutishly as beautiful-ugly, but in France it encapsulates the attitude of hard elegance and mannish poise that is so characteristically Parisian. Roitfeld has founded her distinguished career upon such juxtapositions; elegant and impeccable, she is the purveyor of “porno-chic,” fusing innocent femininity with a vicious sexuality. Her bold, startling images are shrouded by notoriety — it was Roitfeld who revived Gucci by shaving its logo into Carmen Kass’s pubic hair, Roitfeld who put Eva Herzigova on the front cover of The Face gnawing on a bone, and Roitfeld who published images of young girls heavily coiffed and made-up.
An icon that exudes both controversy and creativity necessarily commands respect, and this is where the tone of Fabien Constant’s documentary is somewhat surprising. Instead of asking us to revere its protagonist, it asks that we like her, that we relate to the approachable, maternal character that apparently lies beneath the rakishly thin, polished façade. Perhaps I am a cynic, or perhaps I am too English to understand fully the implications of being ugly and beautiful at the same time, but I could not help but wonder how genuine this documentary was going to be. It is convenient that Roitfeld felt a sudden urge to unleash an ardent love of family life and babies when the first issue of her new magazine, CR Fashion Book, was themed around re-birth.
My suspicions were confirmed in the opening scenes of the documentary, which are set in New York. Grandmother Carine is notably absent, and instead we see Roitfeld voraciously posing, all cheekbones and formidably heavy eyebrows. She then enters a room full of fanatic bloggers who are visibly salivating in admiration. A weak-looking man in a sharp-looking suit stands to announce that meeting Roitfeld is definitively more important than meeting President Obama. He is followed by a topless Rastafarian sporting a leather bondage harness, who twirls whilst squealing that Carine Roitfeld is a goddess! This ludicrous circus of hard-core fashionistas reaches its final crescendo when a photographer leans over to Roitfeld and exclaims that he loves the shoot they are working on, it is so “bourgeois-slut.”
As the documentary progresses, it becomes clear that Roitfeld is subtly removed from these extroverted and abrasively entertaining characters. If they represent the obscenity of the fashion industry, she is the observatrice, distant, calculating, extracting intangible kernels of authenticity and beauty from her superficial surroundings. Roitfeld claims to be obsessed with the cycle of life, but what Constant captures perfectly is the cyclical nature of her personality and her career, her visionary tenacity and her aptitude to revitalise brands, concepts, and even herself.
Mademoiselle C is at its most powerful when Constant films Roitfeld alone, sitting on a table in her house. Sequestered from the world of fashion, which is depicted as garish and plastic, she speaks of her family and her career. She is sweet and fiercely bright, vulnerable yet immensely powerful. There is a lesson to be learnt from Roitfeld: that we must not judge too quickly. A cosy, grandmother figure she is not, but neither is she purely a hard-headed stylist. Roitfeld has realised that the French are onto something — she is ugly and beautiful at the same time, and enormously successful because of it.
