Handmade with Love in France an ode to the artisan

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      A documentary by Julie Georgia Bernard. In French, with English subtitles. Rating unavailable.

      As middle-class culture moves back toward the artisanal and the irregular, corporate life marches ever forward in robotic lock step. Nowhere is this weird contrast more evident than in the world of high fashion, where the hauteness of the couture is marked by a canny combination of exclusivity and mass marketing.

      Newcomer Julie Georgia Bernard’s charming documentary takes a brief yet leisurely gander (the French title translates as “time suspended”) at the working habits of craftsmen determined to die with their hand-shaped crinoline boots on.

      In fact, there’s nothing fashionable, or even fashion-conscious, about the four (male) artisans profiled here. They’re specialists who, like Gérard Lorgon and his parents before him, supply perfect pleats for one-off creations for the big fashion houses. Bruno Legeron’s family has been creating artificial flowers for 135 years. Lorenzo Ré and his wife, Lucie, are probably the last people to carve wooden hat blocks and forms. And Eric Charles Donatien makes feather creations to top off those hats.

      These folks, mostly in their late 70s and all in cramped Parisian quarters, descend from couturier clans, but none of their own children have shown any interest in continuing the trade. There are occasional sniffs from grandkids or, more often, design students, but none seem to last very long—particularly when the cranky maîtres complain about their interns’ work habits or fashion sense.

      “Backpacks,” one muses. “Practical, but so ugly!”

      Picking up the slack are the big companies for which they work their amazingly long hours. Dior, Chanel, and Yves Saint Laurent are currently subsidizing their rents, or even supplying new digs outside of Paris while seeking out supplicants to carry on their fine-toothed skills. Much irony can be found in the inevitable corner-cutting that comes with developing singular creations with the hope of knocking out Asian-made duplicates as quickly and cheaply as possible. Ugly, but practical!

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