Filmmakers Loic Prigent and Fabien Constant are in New York getting ready to shoot new episodes for the second season of The Day Before, a Sundance Channel miniseries that follows fashion designers for the 36 hours leading up to their shows. Previously, the duo has captured Jean Paul Gaultier, Proenza Schouler, Sonia Rykiel, and Fendi. The upcoming season will feature Diane Von Furstenberg, Alexander Wang, Jeremy Scott, and Narciso Rodriguez, whom Prigent and Constant are shooting this Fashion Week. “We have full access,” Constant said. “We never leave.”
Besides the four American designers, season two will also feature one show in London and one show in Paris. “We try to show the calendar of fashion: Paris, New York, Milan, then Paris again for haute couture,” said Constant. In Paris, the filmmakers will follow Peter Copping as he finishes Nina Ricci’s collection. However, it’s uncertain who they’ll follow in London.
They capture “the fittings, the last-minute dramas, the moments where seamstresses are working all night long to have the dresses fit,” Constant said. “Even Jean-Paul Gaultier works on the dresses up until the last second before he pushes the girls out onto the runway.”
Prigent, who directed the 2007 documentary Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton, and Constant are allowed full access because “we are discreet,” so much so that the designers “forget we are even there,” Constant said. “We have some interviews, but it’s always on the run, always an on-the-fire reaction; they don’t have time [for interviews] because they are running for real. Putting a fashion show together is always a last-minute event.”
“It’s impossible to be ready on time,” he added. Things are “always changing and moving.”
Prigent and Constant start filming for ten straight days (“and some nights”) on Thursday in preparation for the Alexander Wang show on Saturday, the DVF show on Sunday, the Narciso Rodriguez show on Tuesday, and the Jeremy Scott show on Wednesday. This is the first time they will be using two crews (four to six people are in each crew) so that they can film two designers at the same time. “We are not going to sleep a lot,” Constant said. The show begins airing in September.
