Prêt-à-Porter, released in the United States as Ready to Wear (Prêt-à-Porter), is a 1994 American satiricalcomedy-drama film co-written, directed, and produced by Robert Altman[3] and shot on location during the Paris Fashion Week with a host of international stars, models, and designers.[4]
Models, designers, industry hot shots and journalists gather for Paris Fashion Week, to work, bicker and try to seduce each other. Early on, Fashion Council head Olivier de la Fontaine chokes to death on a sandwich, leaving behind a wife, a mistress and a mysterious Russian companion who has fled the scene.
As the death is being investigated, Fashion Week continues. Injecting herself between the designers, American television personality Kitty gets sound bites from the high-fashion types throughout the length of the show.
Meanwhile, Anne and Joe are two American journalists, thrown together into the same over-booked room. They are meant to cover the show for their respective papers, but skip out on most of the festivities to have a hotel-room tryst during the week.
Three rival magazine editors from Harper's Bazaar, British Vogue and Elle vie for the exclusive services of Milo O'Brannigan, a trendy photographer who sexually humiliates the three; leading them to vow vengeance against him.
Sergei, a fading icon (and the mysterious Russian with Olivier when he died) and Isabella (Olivier's widow) hope to rekindle a romance from decades ago, but as they attempt to be intimate, Sergei falls asleep.
In the end, Fontaine's former mistress Simone sends her models down the catwalk nude in protest of her son Jack's (who incidentally had been cheating on his model girlfriend with another model) sale of her brand. Kitty quits on the spot, as the nudity confuses her. The final scene is of Olivier de la Fontaine's funeral procession, after the police declared him dead from choking on a sandwich.
Robert Altman was inspired to make the film after accompanying his wife Kathryn to a Sonia Rykiel fashion show in Paris in 1984.[6][8][9] "I couldn't believe what I saw. It was such a circus. It was just too theatrical not to want to film," Altman said in a 1994 interview.[2] For research, in the fall of 1993 Altman attended several fashion shows including those of Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto, Jean-Paul Gaultier and Yves Saint Laurent.[8]
In reference to the scene in which Simone's models walk down the runway completely naked, Robert Altman said: "The actors knew, but most of the audience didn't, so I got the surprise reactions I was hoping for. Those women were wonderful. However, I think that without Ute Lemper, the pregnant bride at the end of the show, the scene wouldn't have had that same impact. And without that scene the whole film probably wouldn't make as much sense."[11]
Release
In the United States, the film was released on December 25, 1994 under the title Ready to Wear (Prêt-à-Porter), while the original title was used in other countries.[12][4] The US DVD and VHS title was Robert Altman's Ready to Wear.
For the film's German release, a line referring to German designer Karl Lagerfeld as a "plagiarist" was removed.[14] Though Lagerfeld had filed a court injunction against the film's release in his home country, the film's German distributor, Senator Film, agreed to cut the reference and the release went ahead as planned.[14]
Box office
The film had a weak debut at the US box office.[15] By the end of its run, the film grossed U$11,300,653 at the box office in the United States and Canada.[16][17] It grossed $35.5 million internationally[18] for a worldwide total of $46.8 million.
Critical reception
Prêt-à-Porter holds a 24% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 25 reviews, with an average rating of 4.75/10.[19]
Roger Ebert gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four and thought it "should have gone further and been meaner; too many of [Altman's] jokes are generic slapstick, instead of being aimed squarely at industry's targets."[20]Gene Siskel gave it one-and-a-half out of four stars and called it "a true bomb as director Robert Altman, on a very hot streak, improbably finds absolutely nothing funny or fresh to say about the fashion industry and the 'journalists' who cover it with a wet kiss. Lacking a screenplay, Altman's intercutting among boring caricatures grows old quickly, and after 2+1⁄2 hours, it may occur to you: 'I could have been shopping.'"[21]Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote that Altman's "laissez-faire satirical style proves ineffectual for shooting fish in this barrel. Fashion is too self-conscious to be skewered so casually".[22] Rita Kempley of The Washington Post called the film "a mess" that was "most compelling when Altman turns his camera on the kitschy runway shows themselves ... Perhaps Altman should have made this film as a documentary instead".[7]Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times wrote that the film "sounds like Altman's most recent successes, The Player and Short Cuts. But there is a difference between creative improvisation and absolute chaos, and while those films were delicately balanced balls that magically stayed in the air, Ready to Wear, with a script credited to Altman and Barbara Shulgasser, has a haphazard 'Let's go to Paris and see what happens' feeling that wastes everyone's time and talent."[23]Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a grade of C− and wrote: "Virtually everything that happens is held up for our ridicule, yet it's never quite clear what we're supposed to be laughing at. The characters aren't really mocked for their attitudes, their obsessions with glamour and money and style. They aren't savaged in any specific, observational ways that could truly be called satirical. They're made fun of simply because they're silly, trivial human beings—walking punchlines in a joke that never arrives. It's like watching an Altman film that's been drained by a vampire."[24]
John Simon of the National Review said Prêt-à-Porter was a picture that only a director's mother could love, and that the film, which has a runtime of over two hours, wears out its welcome in ten minutes.[25]
The response from the fashion community was similarly tepid. In a review that was published in December 1994, fashion critic Suzy Menkes wrote: "For fashion folks, the film just didn't come off—either as an extended skit, or as a bitchy or brutal dissection of the industry ... Most people did not think that Altman had done for fashion with Ready to Wear what he did to the United States Army in M*A*S*H or for Hollywood in The Player."[26]
In August 2021, a television series adaptation of the film was reported to be in development at Paramount+, with Miramax Television being mentioned as the producer.[31] In October 2023, development on the series shifted to the BBC, with Paramount+ no longer involved.[32]
