'The New Look' examines Chanel and Dior during World War II

When most people hear the name Dior or Chanel, they think of exclusive objects: custom-made Oscar dresses, decadent perfumes or handbags that cost as much as a mortgage payment. They think less of the historical figures behind luxury brands: Christian Dior, whose first collection introduced the “New Look” that marked a return to ultra-feminine extravagance after the deprivations of World War II, and Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, the pioneering designer. Known for the elegant short hair of hers and the ever-present pearls of hers.

And as for the hardships they endured (or the moral compromises they made) on their path to becoming fashion icons? Who has time to contemplate that while browsing duty free?

But “The New Look,” a series premiering Wednesday on Apple TV+, explores the lives of Dior and Chanel, the creative visionaries and rival designers who helped redefine modern haute couture. Created by Todd Kessler, the 10-episode drama traces more than a decade of the style's history, from the dark days of World War II to the mid-1950s.

Rather than painting a hagiographic portrait of these designers, the series looks at their activities during the Nazi occupation of France, when everyone, even those now celebrated as models of taste and style, made painful decisions to survive.

For Dior (played by Ben Mendelsohn), then an obscure designer working for couturier Lucien Lelong (John Malkovich), this means reluctantly making dresses for the wives and girlfriends of Nazi officers in order to support his family. It's a particularly tormented path for Dior, whose beloved sister Catherine (Maisie Williams) is a French Resistance fighter and is eventually sent to a concentration camp.

For Chanel (Juliette Binoche), the compromises amount to something closer to open collaboration with the Nazi regime. In the first episode, Chanel embarks on a romantic relationship with Hans Günther von Dincklage (Claes Bang), known as “Spatz”, a German officer; she chats with high-ranking Nazis, including Heinrich Himmler (Thure Lindhardt), the architect of the Holocaust, and Walter Schellenberg (Jannis Niewöhner); and she expresses her frustration with the Wertheimers, her Jewish business partners.

Later episodes show her traveling to Madrid at the behest of Nazi intelligence in an attempt to negotiate a secret peace agreement with her old friend, Winston Churchill, and fleeing to Switzerland after the war rather than face punishment as a “horizontal collaborator.” ”, the term was applied to women who had sexual relations with the German occupiers.

'What would I have done?'

Unlike other depictions of the designer (in children's books and biographical films) that frame Chanel's story as the empowering story of a woman who overcame poverty and sexism through the sheer force of her creative genius, “The New Look” delves into some of the unpleasant aspects. of her life that have received little scrutiny over the years.

The goal, Kessler said in a video interview, was not to present a sanitized version of history or to condemn people who faced unthinkable choices during the darkest era in modern history.

“We all thought we would do, quote, the 'right' thing. But if the right thing to do is live, then Chanel did the right thing for Chanel,” she states. “Hopefully, the audience will put themselves in the characters' shoes and ask themselves, 'What would I have done?' There I go, save for the grace of God. I have no idea what I would do. “I just feel relieved that I don't have to face those decisions in my life.”

When it came time to tell this story for television, Kessler reflected on what elements of the story he embellished or altered for dramatic purposes. Although there are some composite characters and compressed timelines, “I tried to stick to the events as much as possible,” he says.

The writer, who worked on “The Sopranos” and later co-created “Damages” and “Bloodline,” remembers reading about the 50th anniversary of Dior's first collection in 1997 and being intrigued. “I realized instantly that while I knew the name and the brand, I didn't know anything about the person,” Kessler says.

Decades later, he was inspired to revisit the topic after the death of his friend, James Gandolfini, in 2013. He saw parallels between the actor, who achieved great creative success in middle age and died of a heart attack while on vacation. vacation in Italy just weeks before his 52nd birthday, and the designer, who also achieved great success in middle age and (spoiler alert) died of a heart attack at age 52 while on vacation in Italy.

“I really wanted to find a way to write about someone. [whose] Success brings them a lot, it changes their lives, it gives them the public perception of success. But in private there is a person in conflict with what the public wants and who they are,” he states.

His research began with the designer's autobiography “Christian Dior and Me,” in which “he talked about the extroverted salesman and the introverted creator as two parts of his personality that were at war with each other,” Kessler says. “At the end of his memoir, he says it took him 10 years to understand that both parts of his personality are necessary and he looks forward to the next chapter of his life.” (A few months after the book was published, Dior was dead.)

Todd Kessler on Coco Chanel's Nazi Ties: “We all thought we'd do the, quote-unquote, 'right' thing. But if the right thing to do is live, then Chanel did the right thing for Chanel.”

(Apple TV+)

Another important resource was “Christian Dior,” a biography by Marie-France Pochna, who became an advisor on the series and introduced Kessler to representatives of the house of Dior. “I explained my ambition and what I hoped this could be and that there would be no way to tell Dior's story based solely on the information that was publicly available,” Kessler says. The company gave the production access to Dior's sketches and collaborated with costume designer Karen Muller Serreau on recreations of some of his iconic designs, and did so without setting any parameters for the story. “The only thing they offered was information. There was no filter,” she states.

Over the course of the investigation, it quickly became clear that Dior's younger sister Catherine would play a central role in the narrative. Arrested by the Gestapo in 1944, tortured and imprisoned in Ravensbrück, a Nazi concentration camp for women, Catherine eventually returned to Paris and was reportedly the namesake of the Miss Dior perfume, released in 1947, but the trauma of that experience It was formative, Kessler says. . “There really is no Christian Dior, the designer, as he is known to the world, without Catherine.”

Chanel: from pioneer to secret agent

The Chanel part of the story gradually came into focus as Kessler attempted to understand the historical context of Dior's New Look.

“What world were you entering when you launched your first collection?” he says. “At the beginning of the war, Chanel was the most famous and richest fashion designer in the world. She then stopped designing when the Nazis came to Paris, she refused to design for them and lived at the Ritz. [a haven for German occupiers] and had a relationship with someone affiliated with the Nazis. Chanel was the queen, and then [after the war] Dior dethrones her and becomes fashion royalty.”

Adding to the dramatic contrast between the characters, Dior and Chanel had very different design aesthetics: Chanel sought elegant comfort and freeing women from the corset, while Dior sought narrow waists and full skirts that projected an idealized female form.

When it came to Chanel, Kessler had more material to read, reading at least 17 books about the designer and her work (including “The Secret of Chanel No. 5: An Intimate History of the World's Most Famous Perfume,” which she described as “ tremendously entertaining”) in addition to memoirs and other primary sources that he used to cross-reference the events narrated in the series.

He came to see Chanel, who died in 1971, as a woman ahead of her time, although unable to transcend her cruelty.

“Chanel started its business when it was illegal for women to have bank accounts in France. “She was an orphan and when her mother died, her father left her and her sister in a convent,” she says. “She was 10 years old and she really grew up with nothing. “It’s just an incredible, pioneering story of someone who then makes it to the top.”

Kessler also learned a lot about Dincklage, his German lover, including the fact that he was married to a Jewish woman and that the Nazis brought him to Paris “basically to court elite French women, have intimate relations with them and try to obtain information”. of them about French troop movements,” he says.

Although Chanel's long-term relationship with Dincklage was never really a secret, her alleged role as a Nazi agent and other wartime activities have come to light in more recent decades.

“Much of the information about their wartime activities came to light in the late '80s and '90s” thanks to Schellenberg, the Nazi intelligence official, he says. “He testified at the Nuremberg trials. [which were held in 1945-46]. And he offered so much testimony at that time that they agreed to seal it so that when his testimony came out, everyone [implicated] would be dead. In that testimony, it is revealed that he used Coco Chanel as an agent, code name Westminster, all that.”

Chanel's alleged role as a Nazi agent was also investigated in Hal Vaughan's “Sleeping With the Enemy: Coco Chanel's Secret War,” which also depicted Chanel as a virulent anti-Semite. When the book was published in 2011, the Chanel group, which is still owned by the Wertheimer family, issued a statement downplaying its Nazi connections.

“The truth is that she had a relationship with a German aristocrat during the war. It was clearly not the best time to have a love affair with a German, even if Baron von Dincklage was English on his mother's side and she knew him before the war.” it reads. (Representatives for Chanel did not respond to a request for comment on the series.)

Kessler believes Chanel's motives in trying to broker a peace agreement between the Nazis and the British can be debated.

“You could turn it around and say she was on a good mission,” he says. “But at the same time, through my many years of research, the fact that she was interacting with the Nazis and fulfilling that mission is irrefutable.”

In the end, “The New Look” is not about naming names but about the resilience of beauty and artistic impulse, Kessler says.

“It was without a doubt one of the darkest moments in the history of the 20th century, and perhaps in the entire history of the world,” he says. “It's not that, two years after the occupation, the French knew that we only have another two years left. It could have been for the rest of their lives. There is no end in sight. So, the ability to feel again, to dream again, to appreciate beauty again. It's very visceral.”