Lovers of fashion history have two appointments in the coming weeks: the Spanish series “Balenciaga”, which starts on Disney + on Friday, and the American series “The New Look”, dedicated to Christian Dior, from February 14 on Apple TV.
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Disney+ will also soon announce the broadcast of “The Emperor,” dedicated to Karl Lagerfeld and in the final stages of production. The German designer is also the protagonist of a four-part documentary on Canal+ directed by Guillaume Perez and Anne-Solen Douguet.
With “Balenciaga” (six episodes) and “The New Look” (ten), two visions confront each other in a time that shook Europe: before and after the Second World War.
Paris is then the epicenter of the cultural world, especially fashion. A whole generation of dazzling couturiers marches there and imposes their style: Coco Chanel, Jeanne Lanvin, Elsa Schiaparelli … and the Spaniard Cristóbal Balenciaga, who comes to the French capital from San Sebastián in the Basque Country and makes his first appearance in the parade of the year 1937.
The son of a fisherman and a seamstress, he was already famous in his home country, where at the age of twelve he sewed a dress for the Marquise de Casa Torres. Decades later, in 1960, he designed the wedding dress of his granddaughter, Queen Fabiola of Belgium.
“Cristóbal was the only real couturier among all of us. The others were just stylists,” said Coco Chanel about this competitor with whom she shared mutual admiration and rivalry.
Haute couture legend Balenciaga (1895-1972) is famous not only for his mastery of the needle, but also for the secrecy surrounding it. There are almost no photos of him, he refused to greet the audience after his parades and his interviews are extremely rare.
It is the Spanish actor Alberto de Juan who embodies this complex character, obsessive in his work, trying to hide his homosexuality and whose position during the German occupation remains mysterious.
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The Nazis closed his workshop for three months, officially for “inciting rebellion through provocative hats.” In reality, it was because he traveled to Spain to buy fabrics without declaring them in order to keep his business going. However, he was not afraid to dress the wives and lovers of German dignitaries.
After the war, Balenciaga broke dress codes with extra-wide collars, elbow sleeves and daring 1950s pieces like the tonneau line.
At the center of the Apple TV series, Christian Dior (1905-1957) caused a stir in 1947 with the “New Look,” which marked a revival of post-war fashion. Younger, with a certain flair, he accompanied the emergence of the ubiquitous ready-to-wear from the 1960s onwards.
This American production, shot in English, is not only about the character of the fashion designer (played by Australian actor Ben Mendelsohn), but also about the fate of his sister Catherine (Maisie Williams from “Game of Thrones”), who was sent to a concentration camp as a resistance fighter camp was deported. .
Juliette Binoche plays Coco Chanel.
Lourdes Iglesias, the director of Balenciaga, entrusted the role of the famous Mademoiselle to another French woman, Anouk Grinberg.
Gabrielle Chanel (1883-1971), who was suspected of collaboration with the Germans during the liberation, had an affair with a German baron, but also tried to negotiate a peace agreement between Germany and Great Britain with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill at the end.
“She is one of the most fascinating characters ever, even if she talks about men every morning and evening!” smiles Lourdes Iglesias, who sees Coco Chanel’s life as the material for “her own series”.