Angelina Jolie’s Couture Isn’t Just About Fashion

As Angelina Jolie sauntered her way to the Toronto International Film Festival premiere of Alice Winocour’s Couture, she stopped to answer one question. “What made you say yes to this film?”, a hidden voice yells from the crowd. Chuckling softly, she says, “Working with these amazing women.”

Couture cuts through the business machinations of the fashion industry to reveal the forces that hold it all together: the blood, sweat, tears and joys of women. Winocour lets us know as much in one of the film’s opening scenes, where we see Christine (Garance Millier, Raw), a seamstress for the label at the centre of the film, prick her finger while sewing. The director’s lens is unflinching, making the audience watch as blood springs from her finger against a backdrop of white, sparkling sequins. Christine wastes no time in getting back to work—but not before Maxine (Jolie) takes the time to ask her if she’s alright, physically and emotionally. A small detail, but a revelatory moment to witness within a space so often characterized as cutthroat.

Unlike fashion films like Nicolas Winding Refn’s The Neon Demon or The Devil Wears Prada, Winocour doesn’t pride herself on revelling in the stereotypical ills of the fashion world. There’s no melodramatic depiction of eating disorders, self-harm or drug abuse. Instead, Couture uses its runtime to tell real stories about the roles women play in the fashion industry—how they’re upheld as trophies one moment and disposable the next.

What’s worth noting is how the challenges each character faces isn’t at the expense of their dignity. Amidst the chaos of shooting a fashion film in the frenzy of Paris Fashion Week, Jolie’s Maxine discovers that she’s been diagnosed with breast cancer. Ada, the Sudanese model who she has cast to play the lead in the film (portrayed by real-life model Anyier Anei) shoulders the weight of supporting her family while finding her confidence in a new landscape. Angèle (Ella Rumpf, Millier’s co-star in Raw), a makeup artist who works with Ada on her first shoot in Paris, hustles from job to job and struggles to be taken seriously as a writer.

As Chanel, who supported the production of the film and granted exceptional access to their ateliers for filming, describes, the film reveals “the quiet resilience beneath the surface of public performance and honours the unspoken solidarity shared among these women across professions, cultures, and continents.”

That being said, Winocour’s film depicts these women as victors, not victims.

For Anei, whose role as Ada was based on her real experiences in the modelling world, the challenges she faced to get to where she is only make her triumphs more meaningful. “I took so many risks without knowing what might lay ahead,” she says during the film’s red carpet premiere in Toronto. “I left a life that was very well crafted out for me, I risked safety, familial ties, cultural expectation to go for a dream I wasn’t sure I’d get anything out of but here we are. It tells a story to most African girls or anyone who watches this film and relates to Ada that when you bet on yourself, you’ll always win.”

When Ada finally sports the gown Christine has designed (courtesy of Chanel collaborator and award winning costume designer Pascaline Chavanne), she looks like a winner. In this moment of Ada, Angèle and Maxine’s visions coming together, the film demonstrates that the creativity of women and the shared fabric of their experiences is what makes these triumphs possible. “It’s not really about fashion, " Jolie says of the film (its French title, Coutures, translates to the word “stitches”). “Stitching lives, stitching clothing.”