“What I always wanted was to design the most beautiful women's clothing that ever existed.” With these words from the great Christian Dior begins the new Apple TV production, The New Look, released last Tuesday and which explores, inspired by real events, the resounding success of Dior after the end of the Second World War and especially its times during the French occupation of Paris, when he designed dresses for the wives of Nazi officers as a means of survival.
Only a month has passed since the long-awaited series about the life of Cristóbal Balenciaga premiered on Disney and, at the end of the year, the same platform is expected to premiere Kaiser Karl, which will chronicle the rise to fame of Karl Lagerfeld, played by Daniel Brühl.
What has happened so that there is now mass consumption of drama series based on the great fashion designers of the 20th century? That is the question posed by British journalist Ellie Violet Bramley in a recent article in The Guardian. For her it is clear. Although in recent times fashion on television has been in reality format, from America's Next Top Model to Next in Fashion, presented by Tan France, Alexa Chung and later Gigi Hadid, the new trend wants to “give us the beauty and magic of haute couture in a different way,” says fashion writer Justine Picardie, author of books devoted precisely to Christian Dior and Coco Chanel.
It is not about designing or dressing, but about telling, with the help of great actors and a production of many figures, those years that are left behind by the hand of designers who have become true icons of mass consumption.
“For many decades after these big names, the creative director of a firm was barely recognizable to most of the population. Precisely for this reason, stylist Grace Coddington made an editorial photographed by Annie Leibovitz for Vogue USA in which designers such as John Galliano, Tom Ford, Nicolas Gesquière, Helmut Lang and even Karl Lagerfeld appeared dressed as characters from Alice in Wonderland. ”, explains the stylist for Grazia from Italy and the UK, Olivier Jordan.
“Even so, and discounting Lagerfeld and Yves Saint Laurent, many of them remain unknown faces today for most people. Largely because they do not have the voracity of Coco or the enigmatic aura that has reigned over the figure of Balenciaga for decades. For example, how many people know that the Miss Dior perfume was created by Christian thinking about his sister Catherine? ”Adds Jordan.
Chanel has 60 million followers on social networks, Dior 46 and Balenciaga 14. Generation Z has made brands more of a daily consumer product, but they know them mostly through influencers. Of course, they are passionate about seeing what the only designers from those firms who they know the names of were and lived.
Let's add to all this that in both film and television, films whose backdrop are key moments in history have always triumphed, from the sinking of the Titanic to the Roaring Twenties, the two World Wars, the Swinging Sixties... A Through these characters who have gone down in history as authentic myths, the essence of times past is reviewed, what Dior called zeitgist.
To a large extent, their lives are almost a legend, given that, excluding Balenciaga, many did not keep diaries or many written notes, which is why romances, revenge and even political plots have been attributed to them, such as the one we can see in The New Look. According to the series and many fashion journalists, Coco was tasked by the Nazis to meet with Churchill in Madrid to stop the British offensive against Germany.
Another crucial point is the economic power of streaming platforms, far above that of public television or small production companies. J.A. himself told it at the Goya Awards. Bayona upon receiving the award for best film of the year for The Snow Society: "We have spent 10 years listening to people telling us that this film was not possible, that a film could not be made in Spanish with this level of ambition and thanks to Netflix appearing we have achieved it.”
Large payment platforms allow a series like The New Look to feature actors such as Emmy winner Ben Mendelsohn, Juliette Binoche, Glenn Close or John Malkovich, among others. Likewise, “the directors of photography and editing are among the best there are currently and let's not forget the costume design, on which they spend a lot of money, as we already saw in the 2021 Netflix super production, Halston,” he tells us. the economist and professor at the UB, Pau Montsià.
And, to give even more freshness to these series, highly contemporary elements are also incorporated, such as feminism and songs that will appeal to several generations, as in the case of The New Look, whose soundtrack, produced by the Grammy Award winner and Taylor Swift's right-hand man, Jack Antonoff, features popular songs of the 20th century performed by artists such as Lana del Rey, Nick Cave and Florence Welch, among others.
