Dressed

You'll root for Nary Manivong: Abandoned at 14 and later arriving in New York a penniless dreamer, he's an unlikely couture designer. Dressed charts his bid to self-finance a Fashion Week runway show. Between majestic montages of Manivong sketching and cutting, Swajeski sets out to debunk the larger runway mythology, turning to insiders like Simon Doonan (creative director at Barneys) who insist that razzle-dazzle matters only if newcomers back up the hype with know-how. Ironically, we never learn if Manivong has that requisite skill, because Swajeski opts to gloss over his subject's factory expertise in favor of recounting his hard-knock life. Big on emotional highs but skimpy on details, Dressed rallies behind the orphan but fails to reveal the artist.

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