Isn’t an authorized documentary about a luxury retailer the same as an infomercial? Probably, but unlike most infomercials, it does not have two people who are only known to the shopping network openly hawking wares with a phone number on the bottom of the screen. Crazy About Tiffany’s is an eighty-six minute documentary, which sells the mystique of Tiffany, not necessarily the actual product.
Crazy About Tiffany’s is all about the viewer vicariously enjoying the spectacle of being in an exotic location of one of its many stores, starting of course at the flagship store in New York. Instead of academic talking heads, you get recognizable stars, socialites and people from the style world, including Tiffany’s employees—the designers, the tour guides, the jewelers, the gemologists, the sales professionals—discussing the minutiae of what consists of the Tiffany world: the history, the color, the blue books, the jewelry, the image in popular culture, the Gene Moore window displays, the lamps, the trophies, the glass, the etiquette book. It is an entry into a largely inaccessible, international world of wealth and beauty without crossing the actual threshold of the store, offices and customers’ homes and into the dangerous world of temptation and financial ruin.
Even though I am not personally a fan or customer of the store, I am a born New Yorker. We are walkers and do not need to enter a building for it to be a part of a routine. I love walking the entire city, which includes Fifth Avenue. I am actually interested in fashion so the idea of learning more about the wallpaper of my life by watching Crazy About Tiffany’s was appealing. Mom came along for the ride, and in an uncharacteristic moment (she was more woke when I was young), turned to me after it ended and said, “All this jewelry came from Africa.” You get to see Beyonce on the red carpet, but the only people of color who talk are employees. Was that what she was referring to?
Crazy About Tiffany’s does briefly focus on women playing a leadership role in the direction of the company with Francesca Amfitheatrof as the first woman design director. Her gender is an asset since she claims a personal relationship as a potential consumer of her work. There is one black woman, Monique Pean, who appears late in the film as a jewelry designer with an eye of sustainable, environmentally friendly creations.
The use of sound and music was very key to drawing the viewer in and holding their attention. Initially the music is diegetic, i.e. the people in the shot hear the music, then the quality of the sound either increases to become part of the soundtrack. When it suddenly decreases and returns to being diegetic, it helps our ears to perk up and pay attention to what an employee says.
Visually Crazy About Tiffany’s is flawless, colorful and vibrant. It uses illustrations to switch up and have a prose dump without words—showing rather than telling. From the history of Tiffany to a private exchange between a married couple with only the husband’s voice over it, it invokes a historicity to contrast to the colorful clarity and sharpness of the present day. I did not realize that this documentary had the same director, Matthew Miele, as Always at the Carlyle and Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s so I should not be surprised that he was able to get the rights to include clips from films and music to illustrate how the store captured the imagination of generations. In other words, there is a lot of filler when the clips go on a little longer than they should or the film clip featured is from a movie that no one would associate with Tiffany’s or even the actors in it. I am looking at you, Bride Wars. I never even heard of that film. I will not lie—I was a fan of the song Breakfast at Tiffany’s and found myself singing it long after the documentary ended.
Even though Crazy About Tiffany’s is similar to his other documentaries because it is organized thematically, not chronologically, I did not mind, which is surprising because I had a closer relationship with Bergdorf’s than Tiffany’s though I care more about fashion than the store that carries it. Maybe I am getting accustomed to his style even though I am not consciously trying to watch his films. Like Always at the Carlyle, Crazy About Tiffany’s has some essential segments that are like magnificent mini documentaries devoted to figures who have not gotten them yet such as Gene Moore, the window designer with a pass to the world of art, Jean Schlumberger, a French jewelry designer, Elsa Peretti, an Italian jewelry designer, who also gets a prominent role in the Halston documentary, which I loved.
While Crazy About Tiffany’s cannot touch the hem of Paris Is Burning’s garment, they share one element in common. The people who consume the goods from Tiffany’s unwittingly reveal a lot about societal norms when discussing their relationship to jewelry and the store. It is predominantly a very gender normative, heterosexual, white experience though Tiffany’s is targeting same sex couples to get double the moola om engagement rings. While a viewer may be dismissive of hearing little girls or their perfectly coiffed mothers talk about jewelry, do not be. Unlike the interviewees in Paris Is Burning, they have access to the world, but are even less aware of their relationship to consumerism. They have completely and obliviously bought into the sales pitch and become paying purveyors. Their consumption may not be aspirational and unattainable, but they still equate jewelry with love and the strength of familial bonds. Without the consumption, how would their view of relationships change? It never occurs to Miele to ask that question, and to be fair, he may be unaware of the sociological implications of his documentary.
I would prefer to hear from them than Jessica Biel. If you need a celebrity product placement at the Oscars, should not you get someone who could possibly get nominated for an Oscar? Maybe she was the only actor willing to be interviewed for the documentary? She is beautiful, and I am sure that she is a good actor, but I have only seen her in the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Blade: Trinity. I do not remember her from Ulee’s Gold or Elizabethtown. I did love that Jennifer Tilly panned her own films to sustain her jewelry habit. The famous faces were a little less recognizable compared to Miele’s other documentaries, but I actually helped to keep the documentary focused on its titular subject.
If more informercials were like Crazy About Tiffany’s, I would definitely watch more of them, but did it convince me to go shopping? Not at all. I already own jewelry that I do not wear because as a born New Yorker, I would rather not get robbed so there is no reason to get more, but the blue is very pretty. Also I need to keep my money. I work too hard to get it.
