What to Watch: Loic Prigent & Fashion
One of Youtube’s great treasures is the Youtube Channel of Loic Prigent and his weekly posted videos are the great insight into the world of fashion. This channel has so many amazing shot, directed and narrated by the amazing Loic Prigent. He has truly changed the world of documentary with his amazing body of work. Prigent has been shooting documentaries for almost two decades. His name was launched on the fashion world in 2005 when his 6 part docs-series on the House of Chanel’s birth of a couture collection. The series in itself is addictive with the cast of amusing and fascinating atelier staff and the world they have created at Chanel. This docu-series not only impressed Karl to continue to document each collection from 2005 to present day. But it birthed a new wave of insights of the world of fashion for many fashion houses and documentarians.
Loic’s vision and editing in this series truly hold up today. In 2007 Loic Prigent again brought to life the art documentary video by exploring the full length feature format with Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton for television. The amusing world Jacobs creates and Prigent captures is fun and insightful to the chaos of the fashion world. Following the commercial success of Jacobs y Vuitton. Prigent teamed up with the Sundance Channel to produce two season of The Day Before, where he documented a designer collection and its chaotic last 24 hours before the collection hit the runway. The series is another great example of his talent but didn’t receive similar acclaim like it’s predecessors.
Now back to Loic’s actual Youtube channel.In 2018 Prigent started producing documentaries for TMC which reported on the collections held in Paris. Since 2018 he has been posting these video on his youtube channel. Sadly Prigent is not able to keep storage of the episodes up on his channel. So you got to grab these video while they are still fresh on the channel.
One of my favorite and most recent episodes, was the back stage glimpse and D’ateliers tour of the very first couture collection by Virginie Viard for the house of Chanel. Viard was Karl Lagerfeld’s right hand for over 30 years at Chanel. It shows the House Atelier Leaders 15 years later and the emotion of a new chapter and loss is evident in Chanel staff.
More recently Loic did a great 10 minute video on the House of Chanel external ateliers, this one being Massaro. Karl Lagerfeld and the Wertheimer brothers (Owners of the Chanel since it’s inception) saw many of the small ateliers closing for financial and generational interest decline duringhte 80’s and 90’s. These unique craftsmen ateliers have been open 100-200 years and provided fashion brands like Chanel to bring to life their vision. Massaro a footwear atelier, has been in business for over 130 years. In 1997 Lagerfeld and Chanel created a subsidiary company called Paraffection. Over the next 20 years the company, saved the dying art of couture and it’s legendary craftmen. From the embroidery legend Lesage to Desrues a button maker. This video and many other videos can be found on the internet but Loic brings you a fascinating moment in constructing the classic Chanel black-toed shoe in gold leather. Of coarse it feature Kaia Gerber……Who Kaia, look very closely, who do you see?
Another great episode is Prigent’s visit to the archive of Yves St. Laurent. The piece contains a view of the 4 original Mondrian dresses and brief glimpse into the collection. I love the reference to the 1971 collection receiving bad reviews from one editor and Prigent himself. Personally I have alway consider St. Laurent’s 1971 collection was so ill received because the abundance of references to the past in the collection. If you look at the collection as a whole, the collection in the timeline of fashion is actually the birth moment of the RETRO movement that’s still alive and well today.