Fashion documentaries go behind the seams on McQueen and Guo Pei

Late British designer Alexander McQueen liked to tell his story through his audacious fashion, so getting those who knew him to speak about his personal life proved a challenge for the makers of documentary McQueen.

The film, which got its world premiere at the Tribeca film festival this week, tells McQueen’s story through testimonials from his closest friends and family as well as personal archives going back to his early days and clips from his fashion shows.

“We had to prove to people we had the right intention,” says Ian Bonhôte, who co-directed the film with Peter Ettedgui.

“It was a lot of hoops to go through to convince people. But, you know, suddenly you just opened one door and then one door to lead to another one,” he says.

McQueen, who made waves with collections like “Highland Rape” and “McQueen’s Theatre of Cruelty,” committed suicide in 2010 at the age of 40 at what many considered the height of his career.

“He often said, ‘If you want to know me, look at my work; my shows are autobiographical. They’re about what I feel about the world and how I experience the world.’ So it made a great deal of sense to try and tell the story of his life through his work,” Ettedgui says.

Chinese fashion designer Guo Pei, by contrast, was a relatively obscure figure for 30 years until she made headlines worldwide for designing a stunning handmade yellow gown with a 16-foot-long (4.9-metre-long) train worn by Rihanna to the 2015 Metropolitan Museum of Art’s annual Costume Institute gala.