By Neil ArmstrongFeatures correspondent
Apple TV+Covering the lives of fashion designers Coco Chanel and Christian Dior during WW2, The New Look explores what it was like to be under Nazi occupation in Paris.
Spoiler alert: This review contains spoilers for episodes 1-3 of The New Look.
The year is 1943. Agent “Westminster” is being briefed in Paris by her handler, Walter Schellenberg, the Nazi Party’s head of foreign intelligence. He has a special mission for her; no less a task than ending World War Two. She is to deliver a secret message to the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, in Madrid, outlining a proposal for the cessation of hostilities. “In success, history will remember you for this more than for any dress you ever made,” Schellenberg tells the agent.
“Any dress you ever made?” Indeed. For “Westminster” is Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, the celebrated designer better known for perfume and haute couture than for espionage and dangerous undercover operations. I had to check that this bizarre plotline, which features near the start of Apple TV’s lavish new 10-part drama about Chanel and fellow designer Christian Dior and their wartime activities, was not artistic licence – but no, “Operation Modellhut” was real. Although, clearly, not a resounding success.
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Actually, while watching, I frequently had to resort to Google to check The New Look’s veracity. You don’t have to be a dedicated follower of fashion to be aware of names such as Chanel, Dior, Balmain, Balenciaga and so on. Could they really all have been working in Paris at the same time, and have known each other? Yes, they could.
I was aware of Chanel’s Nazi sympathies and antisemitism but did Dior, a gentle, quiet man, really have links to the French Resistance? Yes, he did. In fact, his beloved younger sister Catherine, after whom the “Miss Dior” perfume was named, was a hero of the Resistance. When captured, Catherine was tortured so brutally it is thought she was left unable to have children and yet she didn’t betray her comrades. She was decorated for valour by both the French and the British.
Was Chanel really questioned by MI6 agent Malcom Muggeridge, a British journalist who would later become notorious for a memorable TV clash with John Cleese and Michael Palin over Monty Python’s Life of Brian? Yes, all true.
The show has been created by Todd A Kessler, the co-creator of legal drama Damages, who is probably still best known for producing seasons two and three of The Sopranos and writing several episodes. It takes its name from Dior’s hugely influential first collection for his own fashion house, which debuted in 1947, but the series opens in Paris in 1955. Chanel (Juliette Binoche), who had closed her salon at the start of the war, has returned to the city after living in exile for eight years. She is holding an audience with a small group of journalists. “Christian Dior ruined French couture and I’m coming back to save it,” she haughtily declares.
Dior (Ben Mendelsohn), meanwhile, is about to be honoured at the Sorbonne. He is the first fashion designer to speak at the august institution in its 700-year history and will address an audience of rapturous design students who are chanting his name as if he were a rock star.
Models take the stage in Dior’s exquisite creations. The camera lingers on – caresses almost – gowns in white satin, blue silk, lemon tulle. The audience goes wild. It’s clear that Dior is regarded as a fashion god, while Chanel might be lucky to touch the hem of his garment.
Then we return to 1943 when Dior was a nobody, just one of the employees at someone else’s fashion house, and Chanel, living at the Ritz hotel, was the most famous designer in the world.
Paris under the Nazis
The first three episodes – the rest of the series is under embargo – revolve around how Dior deals with the capture of Catherine (Maisie Williams) and how Chanel first gets involved with the German occupiers and starts sleeping with an oily, sinister Nazi fixer nicknamed “Spatz” (Claes Bang, who, as we saw in another Apple show Bad Sisters, is superb at playing nasty pieces of work).
Apple TV+The New Look looks fabulous. It was shot in Paris and great care was taken to accurately represent the French capital in wartime. As you would expect, the costume department has brought its A game. The accents affected by the non-French actors playing French characters are somewhat distracting but the show is bursting at the seams with heavyweight acting talent. Binoche is magnificent as the manipulative Chanel, a woman willing to stab anyone in the back with a pair of pinking shears if it will help save her own skin. “Chanel can be very treacherous,” says Dior’s employer Lucien Lelong (John Malkovich) – and he’s not wrong.
Williams is excellent as the courageous Catherine, although we’ve barely been introduced before she’s in the hands of the enemy. We will see more of her later in the series. Mendelsohn’s performance is somewhat understated, understandably so. Dior is discreetly gay, a good friend and a doting brother who would probably enjoy nothing more than a quiet life. Also in the cast are Emily Mortimer, doing a glorious turn as Chanel’s loose-cannon, freeloading frenemy, Elsa Lombardi, and Glenn Close as Carmel Snow, the powerful editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar who coined the expression “the new look” for Dior’s 1947 collection.
The show gets into the murky moral complexities of living in an occupied city. Just what exactly constitutes collaboration? Chanel did not design for the enemy, unlike Dior, but, literally, slept with him. Many women were violently punished – even killed – for such “horizontal collaboration”. The show seems to want us to, if not exactly feel sympathy for Chanel, then certainly understand why she does some of the things she does, although it’s difficult to imagine any viewer not being firmly Team Dior.
However, Chanel is certainly the more vivid, colourful character, and her casual villainy is gripping. “Happiness writes white,” as the maxim has it, and so does decency. Dior is loyal, honourable and decent. The air goes out of the show slightly in later episodes whenever we return to the storyline about his business. If The New Look were a dress, it would hang a little unevenly – but it is never less than entertaining, and it is made to measure for anyone remotely interested in fashion.
★★★★☆
The New Look is released on Apple TV+ on 14 February.
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