Kingdom of Dreams (2022): Season 1, Episode 4 - Chapter 4 - full transcript

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(tense upbeat music)
(crowd chattering)

- [Reporter] New York Fashion
Week is now in full swing,

a time when who you wear matters
as much as what you wear.

- This is a huge to-do here in
New York City, twice a year.

It's when all of the top designers

preview their upcoming collections.

Great parties.

On any given day you'll see celebrities,

socialites, supermodels.

- It's Fashion Week in New York,

and CNN's Gail O'Neil has
been braving the crowds.



Morning, Gail.

- Morning, Carol.

I'll tell you, this is
the biggest media crush

I've seen so far, and it's
all over maternity wear.

- It was going to be the first-ever

maternity clothing fashion show

during New York's Fashion
Week, so that was a big deal.

- Here we have the designer,
Liz Lange, herself,

and several of her models,

who you can see are actually
with child, very pregnant.

- Why would a woman wanna take a year off

of looking fashionable,
feeling pretty, feeling great?

The show starts, you're backstage,

you're kind of peeking
through the curtain.



You're watching the show,

you're watching the audience reaction.

And halfway through the show,
I saw that the CNN cameras

were kind of running out
of the tent mid-show.

I'd say within 10 minutes
of walking out of my show

that the world had changed.

- We're gonna go live right now

and show you a picture of
the World Trade Center,

where I understand...

Do we have it?

- [Reporter] We have a breaking news story

to tell you about.

Apparently, a plane has just crashed

into the World Trade Center
here in New York City.

It happened just a few moments ago.

- [Eyewitness] It's quite terrifying.

I'm in shock right now.

I came out of the subway and
I saw a big ball of fire.

- I thought the building
was gonna topple over,

and I don't know what it was.

What was it? A bomb?

- [Bystander] Somebody yelled,
"The Chrysler Building,"

but it's fine.

- [Reporter] Yves Saint Laurent party's

supposed to be tonight with Tom Ford,

I'm sure he's gonna cancel.

- Oh, absolutely.

I mean, Giorgio Armani's

canceled everything.
- Are they here?

Is Tom Ford in town now? Is he here?

- [Bystander] Come this way.

(bystander shrieking)

- I remember thinking,

"Why is anyone gonna
want to wear a ballgown

"or party dress again?

"Why is anyone gonna want
to read a fashion magazine

"when they've gone through this?

"Why does anyone care about clothes?"

(gentle somber music)

- There was a lull for a moment,

but then, within a few months' time,

people started to consume.

It was almost like your patriotic
duty to be a capitalist.

(climatic dramatic music)

(delicate pensive music)

♪ Ah, ah ♪

♪ Ah, ah ♪

♪ Ah, ah ♪

♪ Ah ♪

(dramatic thoughtful music)

(delicate pensive music)

(traffic whooshing)
(tense thoughtful music)

(tense thoughtful music continues)

(audience cheering)
(audience applauding)

- Since John arrived we sell
50% more every six months,

so I hope it will continue.

(audience applauding)

(tense thoughtful music continues)

(tense thoughtful music continues)

(flames whooshing)

- When I signed with Gucci,

I just continually just, like,

pushed myself to get stronger,
physically and mentally,

and this is the outcome.

(tense thoughtful music continues)

(camera shutter clicking)

- 10 minutes, then first looks.

(people chattering)
(gentle tense music)

- [Bystander] Oh, gorgeous. Look at her.

- Thank you.
- Amazing.

- I wanted really each one of these girls

to look like candy, in a way.

Something that was so
beautiful, so tempting,

you know, you really just
wanted to just... (chomps teeth)

(gentle tense music continues)
(camera shutters whirring)

Yellow and blue, and sugar pink and white,

and things that really, you
know, very candy colours.

(audience cheering)
(audience applauding)

- The House of Gucci with Tom Ford

is the winner in Milan
for me at the moment.

You cannot go wrong with Tom Ford.

He is the buzzword, he's hot,

he will be hot, he will
continue to be hot, it is hot.

The word hot is not appropriate.

The word brilliant is appropriate.

The word top is appropriate.

He is the like the T Model Ford for Gucci.

- Some of Tom's campaigns
were the most controversial.

- [Reporter] You shaved a
G in a model's pubic hair.

- I know, and I actually did shave the G

in that girl's pubic hair myself.

I wanted it exactly that way.

I had to fill it in with an
eyebrow pencil a little bit.

- People were scandalised
by this, but, you know,

it's kind of the oldest
trick in the book, right?

Sex sells, and he was milking
it, you know, to the max.

(tense thoughtful music continues)

- It wasn't porn.

But it was just racy enough to titillate

without being vulgar.

- It was a commentary on
where we were with branding.

We had pushed branding
to the absolute limit.

Everything was branded.

So why not, you know,

a guy branding his
girlfriend's public hair?

(suspenseful dramatic music)

- The power of icon,
the emoji of its time.

Logomania was part of the
democratisation of fashion.

You needed something

that was instantly
recognisable as what it was

for the people that were
buying into your ethos

so that they had something
that their friends

would instantly be able to identify.

- The frenzy for these
logos, fuelled by celebrities.

The billboards, the magazine
ads, the commercials,

the placement in movies,
the logo-heavy marketing,

switched the reason that
everyone had purchased

these products in the first place,

from what they were, beautiful,
hand-crafted, luxury items,

rare, special,

to that the represented,

wealth, success, power.

- That is the genius of the people

who are at the head of
these conglomerates.

They are magicians, they magic desire.

- You weren't buying a Louis Vuitton bag,

you were buying the Louis
Vuitton marketing message.

And it has the logo on it,
it's shouting the brand.

- You'd pull out that
lipstick and put it on,

and there was a logo on the lipstick.

So it looked like you
could afford the dream,

but you just had a little
piece of the dream.

You couldn't afford the couture gown,

that had 100 hours of
embroidery and cost $120,000,

but you could get the lipstick
for $35 in the duty-free.

- It's easy for us to
become consumed, in a sense,

by materialism.

Now, materialism is fine.

We live in a material world.

I'm not saying that beautiful things

don't enhance our lives.

But in our culture, we're never happy.

It's, "When I get here I'm gonna be happy,

"when I have those new shoes,
when I go to that new party,

"when I get that country house,
when I get that new job."

You know, we will never be fulfilled

because this will continue
until the day we die.

- And you are to blame!

- But, no, it's bigger than that.

It is our entire culture.

Of course, I was a part of
it. We're all a part of it.

(delicate upbeat music)
(sewing machine rattles)

- [Jeanne] Hi!

How gorgeous have you become?

Look at you! I can't stop looking at you.

Oh, God! That's very fabulous,
to see you like this.

This new incarnation.

Sort of the new and improved McQueen.

- I had to become stronger myself

and strong physically for Paris

because I realised I was
gonna show here for good,

and I was gonna be competing
with the big league.

And mentally and physically,
you have to be strong for this.

(gentle thoughtful music)

- At Gucci I think they gave him

what he wasn't getting at LVMH.

He got healthier and happier

when he could focus back,
entirely, 100% on his own brand.

(audience cheering)
(audience applauding)

- Didn't he look great?

I said, "I am so fed up"

"with seeing these tracksuits and things.

"Show us the tailoring in the show,

"and let's see you looking sexy too."

He's gone slightly Tom Ford.

- Alexander McQueen really
looked up to Tom Ford,

and he idolised him as kind
of the model of the designer

and the man that he wanted to be.

He would start dressing like
him and acting like him,

and eating like him.

And so it was a way for him

to kind of move himself
into a different level,

a different firmament.

- He wanted more acknowledgment,

and he got it from Tom and Mr. De Sole.

- I know he adored his mother,

and I would made a point,
she was leaving Scotland,

to send my driver to pick her up

and take her to the fashion show,

and invite her to the dinner,

just to be attentive and
show that I really care.

(gentle thoughtful music)

- It was time to
renegotiate their contracts,

and Dom and Tom did not wanna give up

the power that they had earned

by turning Gucci from a
nearly bankrupt company

into a global conglomerate.

- [Reporter] There's been some rumours

about you and Domenico.

- You know, rumours are always rumours.

It is true that both my

and Domenico's contracts
are up next year in 2004.

Both of us have worked so hard

over the last 10 years
to build this company.

We have an enormous
emotional attachment to it.

And I can't imagine leaving
it, so those are just rumours.

- Tom and I felt it was our company.

In our mind, that's our company.

Though we didn't own it,

and we respect the fact that
you had to generate success

and dividends, et cetera,
for the shareholders,

but we owned the company.

(audience applauding)
(gentle somber music)

- It was a very emotional
moment, I remember.

I never cried in my life,

even when my parents died, I didn't cry.

But I did cry telling the senior people

of the company I was leaving.

(audience applauding)

(gentle somber music continues)

(audience applauding)

- You know, it's Monsieur
Pinault's company,

and obviously, there were differences,

and we just have to all
move on, as I'm sure Tom is.

- I remember the press
saying, "Gucci's dead.

"Gucci without Tom Ford cannot be Gucci."

I also remember thinking,
"Maybe the word Gucci

"is still more powerful
than the word Tom Ford."

- At the end of the day, because
they had succeeded so well,

the superstar was Gucci,
not just Tom Ford.

- I all of a sudden felt lost.

I thought, "Well, what do
I contribute to the world?"

You know, "What am I doing?

"Who am I? What is this?"

Because I had worked so hard for so long

and I didn't really
realise how it would feel

when I no longer had that
platform or that voice.

I felt quite lost.

- He said his 40s the entire decade
was an absolute waste of decade for him

It completely threw him.

Everything that he'd been doing

once the cork was out of the bottle

just exploded into his private
life and swallowed him whole.

(gentle thoughtful music)

- Alexander McQueen was bereft.

He had lost his mentor

and there was a new era in place at Gucci

where the brand was going to be dominant.

- The Gucci Group sent in
all little men in black suits

and black ties and white shirts,

coming in and watching us all work

and trying to dictate things to us.

- He hated the idea that
there was a group called Gucci

that could tell him, "No, you won't have

"this budget or that budget.

"Yes, you can do this but not that."

(tense thoughtful music)

- [Alexander] It can be really lonely.

And I think there's more
to life than fashion

and I don't wanna be stuck in that bubble

of this is what I do.

Because everyone in the office,

they go home and they can shut off,

but I'm still Alexander
McQueen after I shut the door.

- You have these
incredibly creative people,

you know, like Galliano and McQueen,

who had staged these kind
of very theatrical shows

that felt like theatre to perform in,

inside an industry that
is so demanding of them.

You would never take an artist

and force them to make 14 shows in a year,

and expect all those
shows to be brilliant,

and expect them to kind of
have the creative inspiration

and juice to just keep
producing, almost like a machine.

(audience applauding)

- [John] Along with all the
successes came more collections.

At that moment, I was
producing 32 collections a year

between the House of Galliano
and the House of Dior,

and each collection would comprise

of up to 1,000 pieces.

The drinking did creep up on me.

- He started to take longer
and longer and longer

to get into a state where
he was remotely presentable

to anyone else, 'cause
he was so out of it.

- Do you want me to stop?

- [Reporter] No, I don't care.

It's for you. It's your image. (laughs)

- It's tarnished, you
can't change it! (laughing)

After I had my last toboggan ride

down the great Chinese Wall,

and there I was and arrived at McDonald's.

I mean, there you go, that
was the collection. (laughing)

Joe DiMaggio and where was Marilyn?

In rubber.

- [Reporter] Would you say
that it takes a lot of courage

to give an artist such
a free artistic reign?

- Yes, it's courage but also
we have some reward, huh?

Because sales of Christian
Dior since he arrived

have been multiplied by six.

So it's quite good, don't you think?

(suspenseful music)

- There was a total
fear of Bernard Arnault

and anyone putting a foot
wrong in front of him.

You know, maybe John was scared

that this man could just erase

all the success that he's had.

And he's at the height of his career,

it's just so far to fall.

- [Jeanne] When we think of John

and the incredible things that he's done

for the image of the House of Dior,

it seems to us that he
must have carte blanche

as a designer, artistically.

- Absolutely, yes.
Absolutely carte blanche.

- [Jeanne] So you let
him run with the ball

in any direction?

- As long as the business
is going how it is going.

The business is booming,
so, yes, carte blanche.

(audience cheering)

- [Bystander] Go, Johnny, go!

Mind your ego!

- His image became more
and more extravagant,

to the point where,
often, he would come out,

after his shows, with a full look.

(audience applauding)
(audience cheering)

- [John] If you're gonna do something

I just think you have
to go all out for it,

otherwise just don't bother.

Do you know what I mean?

It's something that, if
you believe in something,

you have to do it to the end.

(climatic dramatic music)

(camera shutter clicks)

- How do you deal with
pressure, and stress,

and all that, before a show?

Or do you get stressed
and feel under pressure?

- I take Calgon baths.

No, I'm joking. It was a joke.

(both laughing)

I don't deal with pressure too well.

I go off my diet, I smoke
twice as many cigarettes,

and I sometimes get a
little angry or rude.

But I don't think I deal with it so well.

(tense suspenseful music)

(crowd chattering)

- He was a little bit.

Marc was getting a little
bit out of control there.

In hindsight, you see
the psychology twist,

and you see the shows
becoming more and more,

not frantic, but confrontational.

(crowd booing)
(crowd hissing)

It was a fairly major
moment, I think, for Marc,

for his show to run two hours late

and to have that audience waiting for it,

people like Catherine
Deneuve and Kanye West,

and Sophia Coppola.

(crowd chants)

There was a little bit of
a "fuck you" quality to it,

I thought.

Mr. Arnault, after sitting there

for really a long, long
time, he pecks at his phone,

and then seconds later
the lights come down

and the show starts.

(audience applauding)
(audience yelling)

(audience cheering)

(tense suspenseful music continues)

- I think when a designer

expects his audience to wait two hours,

unacceptable, ill-mannered,
and totally arrogant.

(audience booing)

- All these people who need
to rush home to their family,

I say they shouldn't
come to fashion shows.

They should retire and
stay home. Fuck them.

I'm not afraid of anything.
I'm shameless and fearless.

- [Tim] I think what fashion

was seeing across the board at this point

is its wunderkinder acting up.

- [Marc] The only opinion that
matters about me is my own,

and that's it.

- They'd been so indulged for so long

that everything had become
a little bit screwy.

(tense suspenseful music)

You did feel a reckoning coming.

Fashion was kind of capturing
something in the air.

(tense suspenseful music continues)

(gentle delicate music)

- Stephen Robinson was
John's right-hand man.

That's how we knew him in the business,

John's right-hand man.

John was the one who
would give you a smile

and Stephen was the one that did not.

It was this. And so you never
knew if he liked you or not.

- [John] Stephen was there
right at the beginning,

I mean, he came as a student
placement, counting buttons,

and then worked his way through,

and then became my right-hand man.

(group chattering)

(models cheering)

(audience chattering)

(models cheering)

(group applauding)

Stephen and I started this adventure

when things weren't working
out, and Stephen believed in me.

And together, we left London.

Didn't have any money.

I don't how we got to Paris, we did.

And we slept on friends' floors.

And as long as I could see
the moonlight I was happy.

- Stephen Robinson became
a wall around John, right?

So everything had to pass
through Stephen to get to John.

So John really lost contact
with the outside world.

(gentle ambient music)

- Stephen took a lot of cocaine.

So, one day, he went home for a vacation,

he just, like, hoovered, hoovered up

massive amounts of cocaine

in a very short time by himself at home,

and he suffered a massive
heart attack and died.

John was destroyed.

(gentle somber music)

- That kind of loss must
have been devastating for him

and it just must have been
really difficult to process.

The questions I would here
people go, "Will he be okay?

"Will he be able to design?

- [Jeanne] How hard is it going on now

without Stephen around?

- Very. You know...

Yeah, it's very, very hard.

- I mean, we all saw the
transition happening,

and it was never nice to see him

in this state of, you know, pain.

Obviously, there was pain there.

He lost someone that meant a lot to him.

- I just remember Anna telling me,

"I have a meeting with Mr. Arnault,

"and he's basically asked me to come in

"and talk to John about what he's doing."

I just had this impression that any moment

John might have gone off the rails.

But rather than trying to
control him internally,

they would call Anna, and Anna
would do whatever she does.

(gentle thoughtful music)

(gentle thoughtful music continues)

- [Alexander] This world I live in,

this fashion world I live in,

it's so unrelated to what's
going on around the world.

So what I try to do is
take parts of the world

people don't wanna see
and bring it to them.

- When we walked in the auditorium

was lit in this hellish red.

Huge pile of rubbish from the
detritus of his old shows.

So it was a comment on waste,
you could look at it that way.

It was a comment on
environmental degradation.

(suspenseful music)

- [Alexander] By nature, I'm
a very melancholy person,

so I like to see the good
and also the bad in things

because life is like that.

I don't like to put like a smokescreen

over everything you do to make
the world a prettier place,

because it's not.

(waves whooshing)

- [Reporter] Fashion is the second most

polluting industry in the world,

and people are buying massively more

than they did 15 years ago.

- Obviously, we're very aware,
as other industries are,

that we have been at fault,

and what we can do in the
relatively short amount of time

we have to course correct.

- [Reporter] So it's an urgency for you?

- [Anna] It's an urgency for
everybody within the industry.

- I feel like he was often
putting the fashion world

in an uncomfortable
position to confront itself.

The fact that so much of fashion nowadays

is thrown away, is disposable.

3/4, they think,

of the 80 to 100 billion
garments made every year.

So literally tens of billions of garments

end up in landfill.

Fast fashion is just a
disposable attitude to fashion.

It's an idea that fashion should be cheap

and shouldn't last a long time.

We should be buying and
buying and buying a lot

and that's why it's fast, right?

Fast production, fast
consumption, fast waste.

- What the Pinault and
the Arnault of the world

created was desirability.

By becoming so big and so powerful,

they obtain more visibilities.

And all the stores around the world

and all those ads in the
magazines around the world,

created aspiration and desirability.

The real problem is the
level of consumption

and that it's got out of control.

If a pair of jeans costs
less than a coffee,

and so it's less costly to
throw it away than to wash it,

it's obviously not okay.

But also, it's the human cost.

It's the human right.

- Six people are now under arrest

in Bangladesh in connection

with a building collapse on Wednesday

that killed hundreds of garment workers.

- [Reporter] On Tuesday,

police inspected cracks in the building

which housed five clothing manufacturers.

Survivors say their bosses
told them to keep working.

- Most consumers, even though
they claim that they care,

it's something that is done over there.

They never see it.

If you ever go into a factory
where sneakers are made

and you see and smell the gasses

that they emit from all the rubber

and different machines
they use to make a sneaker,

you would never wear another
pair of sneakers again.

- [Reporter] Western retailers

have openly criticised the factories

for unsafe working conditions
but continue to place orders.

- In this last 30 years of
growth of the luxury industry,

it has now sacrificed humanity

and the planet for the sake of profit.

McQueen was disgusted by this,

and he felt like he needed
to make a statement about it.

So he steps back and he just
looks at how all this fashion,

consumption, production, money,
glitz, glamor, advertising,

magazines, fashion shoots,
stores, stores, stores,

all this fits into the bigger picture

that is the world today.

- The creation was coming
from inside his heart.

So, probably, he visit
some very sensitive areas.

For sure, you get something
ultra-emotional, for sure,

and you get something quite unique.

- What makes a great fashion designer?

Someone with tremendous
endurance and focus.

You've gotta be very careful.
You've gotta protect yourself.

You've got to love what's
at the core of the industry

or it will kill you.

And even then, it'll kill you.

(audience applauding)
(audience cheering)

- You became a product with a
huge pressure above your head

from people expecting things
from you, lot of collections.

You sign paper, it's too
late it's been signed,

you are agreed.

It's too late, you're trapped.

And for a wild wolf like him,

get trapped means death.

(gentle somber music)
(camera shutters whirring)

(police radio chattering)

- [Reporter] Alexander McQueen,

the darling of British fashion,

has been found dead after,
apparently, committing suicide.

Paramedics were called

to the designer's London
home this morning,

but he was pronounced dead at the scene.

- I think that he had had enough.

And then his mother died,

and I think it was all just enough.

- The last time I saw him

he just seemed in a
really good mood that day,

and that was the day before.

And up until then, he was
like a shadow of himself.

And on that day, he just seemed like

everything had been
lifted for some reason.

Maybe it was just the
thought that, you know,

it'll all be over soon.

(camera shutters whirring)

- I understood that loneliness,

that pain.

We're in such perfection,

we're setting that bar impossibly high.

We don't understand why we're doing it,

and people say, "Wow, how
are you gonna top that?"

And we're like, "Yeah,
we're going to. Don't worry.

"That's what makes us
wake up in the morning."

I was very sad.

(gentle orchestral music)

- I think Galliano is really
the incarnation of Dior today.

And he's the reason why

it fits so well with the House of Dior.

- The way I look is usually
the end of the creative process

because I live it.

I believe it. I become it.

I'm drawn by candlelight.

There's a narrative,

the models are my silent movie actresses,

the script is their clothes.

- [Reporter] And do you
think it's important

for a brand like this
to have such a showman?

- I think the key of success,
in a brand so famous as Dior,

it's key to such level of
creativity and inventiveness, yes.

(majestic music)

- [John] Sometimes I was acting like God.

I was a fully functioning addict.

It started cyclically
after each collection,

after each creative high,
there'd be this crash.

But, of course, with the
increase in collections,

that cycle became faster
and faster and faster

where there was like a
collection every four weeks.

- You're on such a high and
everything is such a fast pace.

Remember all these creative minds

are coming together to create something.

The dress has taken two to three months

or maybe sometimes longer just to create.

For a 20-minute show, I mean,
that adrenaline is just like,

it goes and it goes and
it goes and it goes,

and then Fashion Week is over with.

And then, you go through
the blues afterwards.

It becomes very gloomy, actually.

- [John] It was getting worse and worse

and I was mixing alcohol with benzos.

By then I was a slave to alcohol.

Then I would take the
Valium to stop the shaking

so I could do the fittings.

And then the sleeping pills
so that I could sleep.

My life became unmanageable.

- We have a situation
where John has a problem,

alcohol, I suggest, but
nothing I being done about it.

He needed looking after.

He was crying for help.

- When designers start to misbehave

to the point where both
sides of the relationship

are getting a little...

Maybe the designers not
getting what he wants

and certainly, the businessmen

are a little tired of
the whole situation too.

Sometimes letting things fizzle out

in the most unexpected ways

might be a blessing in
disguise for some people.

Look what happened to
John Galliano at Dior.

- [Bystander] Ah, yeah. Yeah, too much.

- Could it have been avoided?

I think so, I do.

- He had rung me, saying that
he was really frightened.

He was being asked to work so hard.

He said, "Help me, Amanda."

- Only beautiful people.

- [Customer] Awful.

(tense somber music)

- [Reporter] On Thursday
evening John Galliano

was arrested for the
suspected verbal abuse

of a female customer.

- [Reporter] The British
fashion designer John Galliano

has been sacked by his employers, Dior.

(camera shutters whirring)
(reporters clamouring)

(gentle tense music)

(camera shutters whirring)

(tennis ball clattering)

(gentle ambient music)

- What happened to the four designers,

like Tom Ford, John Galliano,
Lee McQueen, and Marc Jacobs,

is an incredible coda.

There is the beginning,
the middle, and an end,

and it's so dramatic that each
of those ends is dramatic.

Tom deposed, Lee dead,
John career suicide,

and Marc in a kind of limbo.

(clock ticking)

(clock bell gonging)

(water fountain whooshing)

- We all dress to show the world

what we want them to see

and the knowing demi-monde of Paris

has always been coolly dressed in black.

So when we tried to think about

what we gonna do for the set,

I just said, "Let's use bits
of the sets from the past

"and just make them black."

I mean, you know, just all black.

(gentle pensive music)
(water fountain whooshing)

(gentle pensive music continues)

- It was probably

one of the most difficult
things to achieve

that I have ever done.

I bought everything single
peacock feather in Europe,

and they were all coming in
trucks from different places.

Every hat work in Paris I
knew of was working on them.

I hadn't been to bed for two days

so I could barely stand up.

Marc and I were just
standing next to each other,

he turned to me and said,

"This is my last show for
Louis Vuitton, I'm leaving."

We were like, "Oh, my God."

(audience applauding)

He knew but he hadn't told anybody.

He wanted to do the show and then leave.

It's not like he wanted to
make this big drama out of it.

We were all very sad and it
was a very emotional time.

I think we all burst into
tears, of course, it's fashion.

(crowd chattering)

- Felt very emotional for me.
- Did it?

- [Reporter] For me.

- It didn't feel like so emotional to me.

Well, I mean, it's always emotional to me

and it's emotional to all of us

'cause we put our heart
and soul into it, you know?

That's why we do it. We love fashion.

(gentle thoughtful music)

- Superstar designers, I
think, were absolutely crucial

to a particular phase
of the luxury industry,

which is building it
up from becoming a name

to becoming a brand.

But once they had become real
brands they were businesses,

and therefore, you can find
people to work in that business

who have creativity but who
are a bit less larger than life

than some of these
designers were at the time.

- [Bystander] We love you, Marc.

- Oh, thank you. Thank you.

- Bye-bye, Mr. Jacobs.
- Bye-bye.

Sorry, bye.

(gentle delicate music)

- In the end, the tycoons, the gods,

in a sense, overlooking this
kingdom, reigned omnipotent.

And their princes, they
treated them very well,

they gave them all the riches,

they gave them everything that
they ever wanted or desired.

But when it was time for them to go

or they cracked up and fell
on their own, they were gone.

The tycoons, the gods,
they were the untouchables.

None of this sad, dirty, side of fashion,

luxury, dirtied them.

- Actually, before I went to rehab,

I did try to reach out to them

but my calls were not accepted.

And quite recently I tried
to reach out, as well,

but the message I got was
that perhaps it was too early.

(sirens blaring)
(gentle suspenseful music)

- [Dana] In the age of
globalisation and hyper-capitalism,

the luxury fashion business

grew into a monster of a business,

just gigantic in a way
that I don't even think

Bernard Arnault could
have originally imagined.

Greed and envy are what
drive fashion tycoons

in the kingdom of dreams,
who whip up this exaggerated,

unobtainable idea of glamor and beauty.

♪ Ah, ah ♪

♪ Ah ♪

- [Dana] What they sell you is
a marketing dream of beauty,

of hand-craftsmanship,
of the finest materials.

Of the most glorious designs.

It reminds me a lot of the Emerald City

in the "Wizard of Oz."

It just looks like this
glittering, glamorous,

beautiful place made of
emeralds that sparkle.

And then, in the end, there's
a man behind the curtain

with a machine turning on the sparkle,

and it's all just smoke and
mirrors, that's what it is.

♪ Ah, ah ♪

♪ Ah ♪

♪ Ah, ah ♪

(climatic dramatic music)

(delicate pensive music)

(delicate pensive music continues)

(delicate pensive music continues)

♪ Ah, ah ♪

(delicate pensive music continues)