If the pitch that got La Maison made didn’t mention Succession and Emily in Paris then I’ll eat my couture fascinator. This rich, occasionally sickly French soap, about the trials and tribulations of a fashion house called Ledu, is over the top, melodramatic and frequently absurd. It is heavy on le fromage and light on subtlety. Yet, despite its daft plot twists and self-important mood, it turns out to be very good mindless TV, as elegantly trashy as it is irresistibly moreish.
Vincent Ledu (Lambert Wilson) is the artistic director of a legendary fashion house which grew from humble beginnings as a small family atelier to become an international powerhouse. It is part of the French establishment, and Vincent cannot move for the honours that are bestowed upon him. That is, until he does a John Galliano and is filmed at a party in the midst of a racist rant about a wealthy private client. When the footage is leaked and goes viral, his position at the head of the family business is untenable. It has become a meme across the planet, Vincent is told. “What is a meme?” he asks, clearly on behalf of the show, which does not seem to know either.
La Maison cocks an eye at the fashion business, though it is far too enamoured with its subject to be particularly cutting about it. Vincent is the old guard, but the new talent is snapping at his heels. Paloma Castel (Zita Hanrot) is a spunky visionary with her own historic connections to Vincent and his company. Paloma and her co-designer, Ye-Ji (Park Ji-min), ride around Paris in a battered old camper van and put on an independent fashion show that made me cringe with such intensity that La Maison owes me a new pot of eye cream and a massage. “You are ecowarriors and tonight we’ll make fashion history,” Paloma tells her team, before shoving rainbow-haired models down a makeshift catwalk in an old warehouse while they all chant “fashion kills!”. Later, they paint “Rovel is green-watching you” in English on the steps of Ledu’s main rival’s HQ. This makes Rovel sound like environmental prefects. Surely green-watching would be the opposite of greenwashing?
But to pick at the threads of La Maison is to undo the pleasure to be found in simply gawping at its bold, bright stitches. Rovel is Ledu’s enemy, owned by the Logan Roy of the piece, an ice-cold matriarch called Diane Rovel (an imperious Carole Bouquet). Diane is the richest woman in France and her life’s ambition is to subsume her rivals by buying them out. Naturally, everyone is holding on to one dark secret that could prove to be their unravelling. Vincent’s brother Victor (Pierre Deladonchamps) is the boss of Rovel as well as a shareholder in Ledu. Victor is married to Diane’s daughter but is having an affair with Perle Foster (Amira Casar), Vincent’s decades-long muse, a former English model whom he claims to have ripped away from the smell of fish and chips and her old life as plain Tracy Foster. She is a bit Isabella Blow, a bit Agyness Deyn. Meanwhile, Victor and Vincent’s hapless nephew Robinson (Antoine Reinartz), possessed of a gruesomely fragile ego, is busily squandering any opportunity he is given to make a name for himself, crushed by the pressures of that famous family name and possessing a weakness for the pretty men of the office.
It all makes the Roys look like a functional unit. Everyone rages, hisses, backstabs and betrays, while fabric is ripped and slashed dramatically. Their bad behaviour is bad enough to be enjoyable, though at times it could do with being a bit more vicious. Diane sacks a driver because he pauses at traffic lights next to an advert for Ledu. Vincent is surprised to find that arrogance, defiance and denial are not the best looks after being exposed as a racist. “I’ll be Queen Elizabeth at Balmoral after Diana died,” he suggests, though he quickly blows his own strategy by telling everyone to shove it instead.
Despite its willingness to belt out the big notes, the first episode suggests a series that might be too buttoned up for its own good. It is silly and serious, a sort of high-low camp that needs to loosen its collar to find its rhythm. But the arrival of Diane Rovel, the tussle over who, if anyone, will succeed Vincent, and the question of who will polish the tarnished reputation of Ledu in the modern age, seems to kick it into gear. This is not refined drama, despite its rarefied setting, but it is deceptively satisfying.
• La Maison is on Apple TV+ now.
