BFI London Film Festival: Antonio Lopez 1970: Sex, Fashion & Disco

BFI Film Festival: 243 features. 67 countries. 15 cinemas. 12 days. One Festival.

This entertaining documentary shows how fashion illustrator Antonio Lopez breathed an alluring wind of change into the New York City and Paris fashion scenes in the 1970s.

Coinciding with the decline of haute couture and the rise of prêt-à-porter, Nuyorican Antonio Lopez (Puerto Rican-born and New York-raised) took the rather sedate world of fashion illustration by storm, creating colourful pictures inspired by street life, people of colour and a particular take on transgressive sexuality.

Lopez’s talent, appetite for life and magnetic sex appeal attracted lovers of both sexes and a crowd of young models that included Jerry Hall, Grace Jones and Jessica Lange. This electrifying documentary combines interviews with Bill Cunningham, a still-smitten Lange and Pat Cleveland to name but a few, together with Lopez's fabulous illustrations, fashion pictures and archive footage. It's a heady mix of glamour, fashion and disco that's impossible to resist.

(Notes by Laure Bonville)

Antonio Lopez 1970: Sex, Fashion & Disco, dir. James Crump, USA 2017, 90 mins

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