Happy Clothes: A Film About Patricia Field Is Exactly as Advertised

By Kim Hughes

Rating: B

A more formal narrative structure in Happy Clothes would have gone a long way in telling the story of American fashion icon Patricia Field, best known as the award-winning costume designer-slash-consultant behind Sex and the City, Ugly Betty, The Devil Wears Prada and, more recently, Emily in Paris.

Filmmaker Michael Selditch approaches his subject as if all viewers have foreknowledge of Field and her achievements, first as one of New York’s most influential clothing retailers serving “pop stars, drag queens, strippers and the sexy ‘It’ girl,” as one commentator puts it, before channeling her angular sensibilities into designing clothes, then answering the call of Hollywood.

Beginning with an unobtrusive fly-on-the-wall approach, Happy Clothes opens with Field and her team eating, drinking, and nattering. Apparently, they are brainstorming the season two wardrobe for the characters on Run the World, described here as a kind of Sex and the City for Black women.

Next, Field and team are shadowed as they prowl a vintage market on the hunt for rare finds. There’s plenty of chit-chat about what Field finds “eye-catching” and how she favours bold colours and mismatched patterns. “I like happy clothes,” she declares, clarifying the film title’s inspiration. “I could never do a war movie or a vampire movie.”

About a third of the way through, Happy Clothes settles into a more conventional documentary style with talking head interviews and archival footage that more meaningfully shape Field’s story as the out lesbian daughter of Greek immigrants whose shop, established in 1971, moulded the style of everyone from Grace Jones to Debbie Harry to RuPaul as well as innovative New Yorkers keen to snap up items by then-emerging artists Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Field’s famed and long-running store is described in the film as the late-80s version of the “iPhone, where you’d find out what was going on in town” and her vision — and take-no-prisoners temperament — is captured in wild tales of colourful if recalcitrant employees who were fired and rehired, in one case more than a dozen times.

With her flaming red hair, ever-lit cigarette, and fondness for frank talk in a gravely voice, Field is easy to mimic, and many do, lovingly, throughout the film. Somewhat by contrast is Field’s empathetic approach to dressing TV and film characters, where she appears to deeply consider back stories not necessarily outlined in the script, folding those ideas into her costumes to give her subjects added dimension.

More from Field about how she teases those details out would have been welcome, but it’s clear from Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, and Lily Collins (of Sex and the City and Emily in Paris fame, respectively) that Field’s in-depth approach is an actor’s dream come true. And at age 82, Field can’t help but be an inspiration.

A more focused storyline might have served her better. Then again, Field wholly embraces the quirky. By that metric, with Happy Clothes, she got something very much in line with her own aesthetic.

Happy Clothes: A Film About Patricia Field. Directed by Michael Selditch. With Patricia Field, Sarah Jessica Parker, Lily Collins, Kim Cattrall, and Darren Star. Available October 8 on VOD (Bell, Telus, Rogers, Shaw, Cogeco) and to rent (Apple TV/iTunes, Cineplex Store, Google Play).