Apple TV+’s new drama series sets out its stall early. It opens with two captions. “During World War II,” explains the first, “the Germans occupied Paris for four years, forcing the French to submit to Nazi authority and oppression.”“This is the story,” the second tells us, “of how creation helped return spirit and life to the world.”
Simplistic, grandiose and absurd to the point of insult – welcome to the world of The New Look. This is the tale of the rivalry between designers Coco Chanel and Christian Dior that was formed in the crucible of a global conflict, which, not content with simply putting a spoke in the wheels of fashion’s evolution and Coco’s business in particular, also killed millions of Jews. But don’t worry – you’re not going to hear much about them. This is about the importance of art and beautifully dressed Gallic suffering (you’re not going to hear much about Vichy France, either, and its very unstylish deportation of 76,000 Jews to death camps), so don your highest couture and on we go!
We open in 1955, as Coco Chanel (Juliette Binoche) is about to launch her first collection since she closed her boutique at the beginning of the war and is busy putting the boot into Christian Dior (Ben Mendelsohn) to the assembled press corps. We cut between that and the retrospective he is being honoured with at the Sorbonne at the same time. “Christian Dior ruined French couture and I’m coming back to save it!” she soundbites for them all.
At the retrospective, however, things take a turn. A student stands up and asks Dior how he feels about having made clothes for Nazis’ wives throughout the war, while Chanel did the right thing and closed her atelier. He begins to explain and we are transported back to 1943, where it becomes clear that the truth is a little more complicated than snotty little youngsters might think.
Dior was indeed working for the house of Lucien Lelong (played by John Malkovich, whose accent makes you pray Binoche never had to share a set with him), and designing ballgowns for bad Germans and their wives and girlfriends. But! He gives the money he makes to his sister (Maisie Williams) who is highly active in the resistance! And lets members of it use his apartment! And the wives and girlfriends are often French and pass valuable information on to him during fittings and faked fashion disasters! So, you know, think on.
Meanwhile, Chanel … Well, I don’t know how much you know about her – courtesy of the many biographies of the woman, but she lived at the Ritz, which was then a Nazi headquarters, and, you know how it is – eventually you begin talking to the neighbours and finding out that they’re not all bad guys! Next thing you know, one of them, Spatz (Claes Bang), is taking you out to dinner and springing Himmler on you as a surprise guest. Oh, and the main architect of the Holocaust also wants to make Berlin the couture capital of the world and what’s a girl to do! From there it’s just a hop, skip and a jump, in some gorgeous prewar shoes, to agreeing to use her connection to Winston Churchill to deliver a secret peace offer from the Third Reich behind Hitler’s back. It’s only polite that, in return, her new friends help her out by applying the Aryan laws to her former (Jewish) business partner, whom she feels has defrauded her, strip him of all he has and give it to her. It could happen to anyone.
Look, as a drama it’s fine. Well-paced, lots of action, lovely to look at and really good central performances from Binoche – clearly relishing Chanel’s acidity and wit – and Mendelsohn, treading a careful line between making Dior a gentle man almost overwhelmed by the world and a total drip. Though even he cannot save one scene, in which Dior attempts to bribe a man for information about his captured sister with bolts of fabric instead of cash, from descending into absolute bathos.
The script is far from couture. People says things such as: “For me, creation WAS survival” and “Say something honest for once in your life”, but Chanel has some snappy lines and there is enough energy to keep everything moving along.
It’s just that, as a whole, The New Look doesn’t amount to enough. You could see it as escapism, but that requires accommodation of the fact that the Holocaust is essentially written out of the story in favour of a rivalry over tulle. At a time when various high-profile institutions issued statements on Holocaust Memorial Day without mentioning Jewish victims, it’s a drama that has landed at just the wrong time. The frocks are lovely though.
• The New Look is on Apple TV+
