The spectrum of fashion fanatics will range from those who make choosing their outfits an important, daily ritual to those extremists who make Zoolander look like your 14-year-old niece. For those on the far right side of the spectrum, fashion is a religion and utilizes the same infrastructural systems, including a heavy reliance on symbols, exclusivity, and sacraments. If fashion exists as a de facto religion? Karl Lagerfeld, then, is probably the supreme leader, and a new four-hour German documentary on Vox will set out to explore this parallelism.
Mode Als Religion (Fashion as a Religion) will test journalist Martina Neuen's theory that, for many, fashion affects those obsessed with it in a similar way that religions affect the religious (for example, she measures and contrasts the brain stimulations of a Catholic priest and a fashion follower as they interact with their religions. Lagerfeld also plays a prominent role in the documentary, ostensibly demonstrating via interviews and behind-the-scenes looks into his work and personal life how far fashion devotion can go. The documentary will debut for our Deutschen friends on September 7 on Vox, but we're sure non-German speakers will be wily enough with the Internet to procure their own version soon after. Good luck Googling! (WWD)
Photo: Courtesy of Vox/WWD
