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This is an art history of the twentieth century as seen through fashion, its most glittering art form. Weaving together video footage, magazine layouts, and first-hand accounts, the filmmakers trace the life of DV, one of fashion's all-time most imaginative thinkers.

Born rich ('but ugly', as her mother would have said) in Paris at the turn of the century, she partied her way to New York. When Carmel Snow noticed her chic outfit in a nightclub, she offered her a job at Harper's Bazaar. Thus began a fabulous self-created career, first at HB through the thirties forties and fifties, and then at Vogue in the sixties. There, she launched photographers like Richard Avedon and David Bailey, and put designers like Yves St Laurent on the map. She discovered an endless succession of models like Verushka and Iman, who turned notions of beauty inside out. And she originated idea of celebrities as models, studding Vogue with wonderful shots of Cher, Mick Jagger, and Jacqueline Kennedy. She also spent staggering amounts of Vogue's money pursuing fashionable subjects around the globe; they she fired her in 1972.

She was not idle for long- soon the Metropolitan Museum persuaded her to help launch the Costume Institute. There, she was able to bring her extravagant sense of fashion to a wide audience, and, not incidentally, throw some great parties.

The best thing a documentary can do is pick a fascinating subject, and clearly, DV was a LOT of fun. A Who's Who of actors, artists, writers, and fashion luminaries signed on to supply their recollections, both then and now. Her interviews with George Plimpton, Jack Paar, and Dick Cavett are lavishly excerpted, as well as material from her sons and grandchildren. (Her granddaughter's reading aloud from a vintage issue of Vogue is definitely a high point!)

The wealth of material here is stunning- and the filmmakers' skill in handling it is a triumph.

I think EPL went wrong at the concept stage, taking an inspirational best-seller as the basis for a big budget romantic comedy. The book was wonderful, funny, truthful, and of course self-indulgent, because you can't do self-help without navel gazing. And it was a huge best-seller, so of course it had to be a huge movie.

But spiritual journeys don't translate naturally to the screen- not even with Julia Roberts pairing a vast wardrobe of cute outfits with her two or three patented facial expressions. She's the living embodiment of The Anguish of Being Gorgeous. And as her search for meaning has to cover three continents in two hours, with the travel porn laid on thick, there's not much time to go deep.

I'm at a loss to say how this might have worked better- lose the Eat? drop the Love? (Pray almost worked, thanks to Richard from Texas). Gilbert's trip was a spiritual journey, not a well-dressed romp through the funner parts of Europe and Asia. It might work better as a dreamy mood piece like Moonrise Kingdom, or an offbeat meditation.

Good book, though