The second sequence of “A Journey in Craft” places Lee Jun-Ho in Berluti’s Paris workshops. The film is less about a journey than about a commission: a suit and ankle boots, followed by the meeting at delivery.
From one country to the next
The series’ first sequence took the Maison’s ambassador from the Manifattura in Ferrara to the canals of Venice. The second turns to Paris and the bespoke workshops, where Berluti has garments sewn and shoes made. The service runs from head to toe and is shared between rue Marbeuf and rue de Sèvres. The Maison was born in the late nineteenth century and has been carried by four generations of bootmakers. It added leather goods in 2005 and a full wardrobe in 2011.
Three episodes, three moments
The first episode opens on the Paris workshop. The second is that of the first fitting: Lee Jun-Ho returns to workshops he already knows, moves from tailoring to shoemaking and attends the review of sketches, the confirmation of directions and the trial of the toile. According to Berluti, a camera turns slowly around the scenes, as a visual signature of the return. The third episode opens on a walk through Paris, then on the delivery of the finished suit and ankle boots, followed by a last fitting.
What the device changes
The mechanism is simple: the ambassador becomes a client. He no longer illustrates a craft, he orders it, and the film borrows the stages of a commission (sketch, agreement on direction, trial, delivery). The two trades, tailoring and shoemaking, unfold in parallel within the same episode, and the Maison, a shoemaker first, sees this as a way of showing that each sheds light on the other.
This is the right criterion for reading it. A film about bespoke is worth the fidelity of its story to what a commission is: several appointments, corrections, a piece that changes between two trials. Three episodes for three stages of that duration give it its form. The lit close-ups on material, stitching and finishing, announced for the delivery, will have to show the work of the hands rather than its result.
What to remember
A bespoke commission is told through its returns, and Berluti has chosen to film it that way. The series succeeds if the viewer leaves the third episode knowing what was decided at each fitting, and not merely seeing the finished suit.
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