The New Look: The War, Dior, Chanel and Survival After a Fashion in Apple TV+ Series
By Karen Gordon
Rating: B+
By the start of WWII, Coco Chanel, was already the fashion world’s biggest star. Rather than make clothes for occupying Nazis, she shut down her atelier. And yet, she was a Nazi sympathizer, acted as a German agent, and after the war spent eight years in Switzerland fearing exposure.
Christian Dior, on the other hand was still a young designer, when the German tanks rolled in. He continued to work for a successful design house, designing fancy dresses, sometimes for the wives and girlfriends of Nazis.
But as his character says early in the Apple TV+ series The New Look, “There is a truth, but there is also another truth that lives behind it.” In other words, in wartime, things are not always what the seem.
Chanel (Juliette Binoche) and her Nazi lover (Claes Bang) in The New Look
The lives of these two contemporaries and giants of 20th century fashion and culture, the very different way they navigated the Nazi occupation of France and its aftermath, is explored in the 10-part mini-series, The New Look.
Inspired by historical fact, with a marquee cast, the series is an engrossing look at life under a brutal murderous regime that asks, how does one survive those circumstances? What choices does one make for themselves in an environment where no one is really safe?
The series opens in 1955. Chanel (Juliette Binoche) has returned to Paris from eight years of self-exile in Switzerland, aiming to reclaim her status as France’s true fashion innovator. She’s about to reopen her business, and is speaking to members of the press. She’s blunt, tough, arrogant.
At the same time, Dior (Ben Mendelsohn) is being honoured at the Sorbonne, not just for his fashion designs that helped restore the supremacy of French couture, but for their role in helping restore life and hope to France in the post war era.
Accepting questions from the audience, Dior is asked directly about what he did during the War, with the questioner noting that Chanel shut down her design studio, while he continued to work.
The moderator tries to deflect, but true to what we come to understand about Dior’s attitude and ethics, he gently refuses to defer. Instead his answer takes us back in time.
With the Nazis occupying Paris, Dior, an anxious, introverted and talented young designer, is working for a successful design house run by Lucien Lelong (John Malkovich), alongside others who would go on to become some of the greatest names in fashion.
Among them: Balanciaga (Nuno Lopes) and Balmain (Thomas Poitevin). LeLong keeps the client list away from the designers, protecting them as much as possible from knowing which designs are for the Nazis. He has made his choice to keep people working. They’re doing good work, but there is an air of worry with the designers often questioning themselves.
There are other complications in Dior’s life. He’s homosexual, involved with Jacques (David Kammenos), who runs the bar Dior and his colleagues frequent. But under Nazi occupation, they cannot risk being caught.
As well Dior’s beloved younger sister Catherine, (Maisie Williams), who lives with him, is part of the resistance, delivering messages. As the Nazi patrols become more intense, he begs her to stop. But she is determined, and is ultimately arrested, tortured and sent to the Ravensbrück work camp. Through the series, Dior tries to find her and do whatever he can to get her released.
Chanel made her pre-war name by reinventing women’s clothing, and creating her famous perfume. After closing her atelier, she moved into the Ritz hotel. The Ritz was where many of the Nazi elite lived in Paris, saw her courted by Nazis who wanted to use her status and connections for their benefit. She ends up starting an affair with the Nazi operative Baron Hans Günther “Spatz” Von Dincklage (Claes Bang), who then becomes her handler.
The juxtaposition of the two designers is a narrative gift. Innovators in the same profession, each of them destined to make major waves around the world, and their personalities quite opposite. Dior is modest, thoughtful, anxious, dedicated to finding his sister, and focused on his work. He has a community around him, fellow designers, his partner.
Chanel, on the other hand is an easy villain , egotistic, selfish, manipulative, elitist, and an anti-Semite. She is devoted to her nephew, who she raised after her sister died, but in other dealings she can be cold and duplicitous.
Chanel’s morality is on a sliding scale, but to the credit of series creator Todd A. Kessler. and the portrayal by Binoche, she isn’t simply a villain. It paints a picture of an ambitious woman, caught up, and perhaps even attracted to dangerous circumstances. The series seems less interested in judging her, or any of its characters, but rather presenting the world as it was and letting us make up our minds.
Kessler says the series is inspired by true events, as opposed to the term based on, which, given that this is a drama, is a distinction that makes sense.
But he and his team did much historical research in creating the series, which makes it more fascinating.
It also manages, at times to evoke a sense of dread and anxiety. Catherine Dior's return to her brother after years in a Nazi work camp is heartbreaking
Although it doesn't draw links, the stakes feel more present right now than is comfortable.
But there’s another element in The New Look. The term The New Look is from a comment made by Carmel Snow (Glenn Close) the powerful editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar magazine who came to post-war France to find the next great designer.
She was there in 1947 as Dior launched his own fashion house with his new collection.
In Dior, she found the designer she felt was the new champion of French fashion. She found his collection breathtaking, calling it “a new look.”
She wasn’t the only person taken by the joy and beauty of the designs. It’s said that that show, with its elegant and beautiful dresses, was one of the turning points in post-war France. After the bleakness of the war, the Nazi occupation, and people trying to rebuild after so much death, sadness, persecution and devastation, Dior aimed to bring beauty back to the world, in the way he knew.
In part, The New Look also suggests that a celebration of beauty can inspire renewed hope.
The New Look, directed by Todd A. Kessler, Helen Shaver, Jeremy Podeswa and Julia Ducournau. Stars Ben Mendelsohn, Juliette Binoche, Maisie Williams, John Malkovitch, Emily Mortimer, Claes Bang and Glenn Close. Episode one debuts February 14, on Apple TV+