Review: ‘People’s Designer’ lightly stitches together the story of Jeremy Scott

Vlad Yudin’s documentary ‘Jeremy Scott: The People’s Designer’ offers a good thumbnail sketch of the reigning crown prince of fashion

movie, film, review, documentary, Jeremy Scott: The People’s Designer, Vlad Yudin, Miley Cyrus, Madonna and Katy Perry

Who is Jeremy Scott? If you’ve never heard of the L.A.-based fashion designer, Adidas collaborator and enthusiastic appropriator of pop culture, then Vlad Yudin’s documentary “Jeremy Scott: The People’s Designer” offers a good thumbnail sketch.

The film comes as the reigning clown prince of fashion — whose celebrity clientele includes Miley Cyrus, Madonna and Katy Perry, and whose runways are filled with references to graffiti, fast food and Bart Simpson — is seeing his career hit overdrive.

Yudin’s documentary focuses heavily on the run-up to Scott’s debut runway show as creative director of Italian luxury brand Moschino in February 2014. (He also designs his own Jeremy Scott label.) The film uses interviews with Scott, his family, celebrity friends (including Cyrus and ASAP Rocky) and fashion industry heavyweights to sketch out a career that starts with his square-peg-meets-round-hole childhood in Kansas City, Mo., and reaches a high point when he dresses Perry for the Super Bowl halftime show in February.

Anyone who follows Scott’s career in any depth may be frustrated by the film because the brush strokes are broad, and the focus feels more about the scrum and swirl around the man than the man himself. The documentary all but ignores the role that L.A. — where he’s lived since the early aughts — has played in his career.

But that’s clearly not the target audience. After all, the conceit of the film is that Scott’s success is despite — not because of — the critics who fill the show seats or the design-school gatekeepers who rejected his applications. He is, as the title of the documentary makes clear, “the people’s designer.”

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‘Jeremy Scott: The People’s Designer’

MPAA rating: PG-13 for language, some suggestive images, nudity

Running time: 1 hour, 48 minutes

Playing: Laemmle’s Ahrya Fine Arts, Beverly Hills, AMC Orange 30