Tom Armitage, Berlin: Two French documentaries feting the lives of reclusive designers Yves Saint Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld shore up the myths that surround their subjects, but shed little light on the men behind the fashions.

Fawning celebrities, strutting models and square-jawed assistants feature in Rodolphe Marconi's Lagerfeld Confidential, lending a dose of glamour to the proceedings at this year's Berlin Film Festival.

"It is a reflection of me, a reflection of what I wanted to show about myself," Lagerfeld told reporters after the film premiere, adding, however, that he had nothing to do with the editing of the film.

Director Marconi, who first met Lagerfeld in a bar, reduced 150 hours of material shot over two years into an 88-minute feature. The result seems like a glossy fashion commercial.

Clad in trademark dark glasses with his grey pony-tail bobbing above his starched collars, Lagerfeld comes across as a humorous eccentric who survives on his wits alone. From a liberal family in northern Germany, he decamped to Paris in 1953 and became a fashion czar credited with reviving the venerable couture house Chanel in the 1980s.

In the film, he jets between his various houses and to photoshoots with top models and actors like Nicole Kidman. He never leaves home without one of his arsenal of iPods or the velvet comforter cushion his nanny gave him as a child.

But Lagerfeld, who appears to perpetually reinvent himself as fashions change, warned viewers that he'd already moved on." This film is from a particular time and today I am already someone else," he told reporters. "I am a puppet in my own hands.