THE NEW LOOK (Apple TV+)
During the four years that Paris was occupied by Nazi Germany, the elegant city – known for its artisans, ateliers and haute couture designers – was plagued by curfews, food trucks and trigger-happy soldiers patrolling every street corner.
Set against this unnerving backdrop, The New Look, Apple TV+'s new blockbuster series, a drama “inspired by true stories” follows the lives of fashion legends Coco Chanel and Christian Dior.
Dior, a then-unknown young designer whose sister secretly works for the French Resistance, works in Lucien Lelong's studio and involuntarily designs clothes for fashionable Nazi wives and lovers. Chanel, already famous, hides out with her Nazi lover in the most magnificent hotel in Paris, the Ritz. Both survive as best they can.
Juliette Binoche as Coco Chanel (left) and Emily Mortimer as her close friend Elsa Lombardi in the Apple TV+ series The New Look
Maisie Williams plays Catherine Dior, the sister of designer Christian, who is imprisoned in the infamous Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany
Bringing fashion to the screen has always been difficult: its special alchemy of creativity, originality and hunger, overlaid with the need for commercial success, is elusive. Here it fits beautifully, one might say seamlessly, into a larger story about the challenges and compromises of war.
“The New Look” isn’t the only on-screen representation of the feverish fashion industry right now. You can choose between glamorous offerings: High & Low: John Galliano, a documentary about the designer's fall from grace after an inexplicable anti-Semitic outburst, hits theaters next month; The excellent Kingdom of Dreams – the story of Tom Ford and Alexander McQueen – is available to stream on Sky alongside the Disney Plus miniseries Cristobal Balenciaga.
However, the opening episode of The New Look, released yesterday, isn't really about fashion. The closest we get to the skill and passion of dress design is in the magnificent opening credits, which evoke the intensity and detail of the workspace.
The captivating story of Dior (played by Ben Mendelsohn), who desperately tries to free his sister Catherine (Maisie Williams), who is imprisoned in the infamous Ravensbrück concentration camp, is juxtaposed with the plush world of Chanel, described by a Nazi general, when they meet at a ball, as “bigger than any Hollywood star”.
Juliette Binoche's Chanel is convincing without being accurate. The actress is more beautiful than Chanel, whose appearance was what the French call Jolie Laie (ugly pretty) – more gamine and less feminine.
It wasn't Chanel's beauty that attracted powerful men – like the Duke of Westminster, with whom she had an affair, his friend Winston Churchill and the Nazi high command – but her confidence, her incredible style and the fact that for Chanel, sex meant was a currency like everything else.
Binoche is softer and less stiff than the original, sometimes slumping in her chair in a way the real woman never would have.
When the first episode begins, Chanel's shop was closed (and remained closed throughout the war), but it would have been helpful to look at how she had already defined the contemporary woman's wardrobe – wide trousers, fitted cuts, more gorgeous Costume jewelry. However, Mendelsohn's Dior is completely different from the real Dior, a chubby, round-faced young man who came into fashion after his career as an art gallery owner failed because his father ran out of money to support him.
Ben Mendelsohn (left) plays Christian Dior, a then-unknown young designer who works in the studio of John Malkovich's Lucien Lelong (right).
The actor portrays Dior's general physical discomfort and shyness, but doesn't let us see even a trace of the intellectual firepower and young creative genius that led to the House of Dior earning $20 million until his sudden death from a heart attack in 1957 per year – an astonishing amount for the time.
The new look brilliantly evokes the Paris of the time – both the richly paneled rooms with scarlet Nazi banners and the dirty cobblestone streets and tunnels of the resistance.
Many of the haunts pictured are still places in the fashion world today: notably the Ritz, which takes center stage during Paris Fashion Week, while several of the grand buildings with their grand stone staircases are home to enduring names including St. Laurent, Dior and Chanel.
“The New Look” is a visual feast, but more importantly, it is a lesson in the choices that everyone – even the seemingly most privileged – must make in order to survive in times of war.
The first three episodes of The New Look are now available on Apple TV+. Subsequent episodes will be released every Wednesday until April 3rd.