‘The New Look’ Fashion: Recreating Dior’s Iconic Bar Suit and Which Paris Hotel Stands in for the Ritz
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Fashion fans are sure to be scrutinizing every detail of The New Look, the 10-episode Apple TV+ series that tells the story of Christian Dior (played by Ben Mendelsohn) launching his eponymous Paris label with the now-legendary 1947 New Look collection that inspired the production’s title.
It’s among the reasons both creator Todd A. Kessler (Damages, Bloodline) and costume designer Karen Serreau (The Serpent Queen) knew they had to approach Dior’s seminal post-World War II designs with an unrelenting attention to detail. In other words, the participation of the brand that Dior built was essential.
More from The Hollywood Reporter
The Best Presidents Day Sales on Dyson Vacuums, Casper Mattresses, Samsung's Frame TV and More
Hollywood Loves Hoka: These Are the Brand's Best Running Shoes and Walking Sneakers
“Dior was very generous in opening up its archives to us,” Serreau tells The Hollywood Reporter. “The way Todd has crafted the story, early on we see Christian talking to an audience at the Sorbonne in 1955, with a runway showing of several designs, and then of course later we see the debut showing of the 1947 collection. Dior worked closely with us on choosing the outfits that would work for the project, and they played a big role with sketches, fabric swatches and photographs. In some cases they had fabrics hand-dyed or made up for us — a 1947 leopard-print dress, for example, they recreated that fabric for us.”
The series largely explores Dior’s post-World War II journey, both personal and professional, from his frantic efforts to locate his sister Catherine (played by Maisie Williams) and secure her return from the Ravensbrück concentration camp to his desire to open an eponymous house. The couturier saw his New Look collection as a necessary reset for both his career and for post-war fashion in Paris. “He used 9,800 yards of fabric for the 1947 collection, which was scandalous then after so much deprivation,” Serreau says.
In advance of the three episodes made available for the Feb. 14 premiere, Dior released a statement about its involvement. “To recreate the Dior haute couture silhouettes at the heart of The New Look series, the house and its archives (Dior Heritage) joined forces with Apple in two steps,” the statement notes. “Ten models were created, notably connected to the autumn-winter 1955 collection and to the lecture that Monsieur Dior gave at the Sorbonne that year. Ten other silhouettes were designed to revive Christian Dior’s very first défilé, which unveiled the spring-summer 1947 haute couture collection. This historic occasion — held on Feb. 12, 1947 in the iconic salons of 30 avenue Montaigne — was heralded as the New Look by Harper’s Bazaar editor-in-chief Carmel Snow.” Snow is played in the series by Glenn Close.
Paris likewise plays a major role in the series, both behind the scenes and in front of the cameras. Serreau says the Dior brand recommended the workshop that crafted the replica garments of the house’s designs, while the hats, shoes, gloves and belts also were crafted in Paris workrooms. “That level of detail was appreciated by the Dior team, which attended part of the filming,” Serreau adds. “With certain scenes, they said it was as though they were seeing the real thing for the first time.”
In shooting the series in the Sorbonne’s Grand Amphitheatre and on Avenue Montaigne and other iconic streets in the French capital, Kessler tells The Hollywood Reporter his goal was “to transport the audience to 1940s Nazi-occupied Paris and recreate that time and place. The most significant challenge of filming in Paris was honoring the historical accuracy, as much of Paris has changed since World War II.”
Dior is also surrounded by a trio of friends and fellow fashion luminaries, all of whom were at different places in their careers at the time the war ended: Lucien Lelong, Dior’s employer in the early years of the series, played by John Malkovich; Pierre Balmain, played by Thomas Poitevin; and Cristobal Balenciaga, played by Nuno Lopes.
“I gave them each a color,” Serreau explains of her strategy for the scenes featuring all four men. “By color-coding them, that meant when they were all together, none would look the same, which helps the eye when watching the scene. Lelong wears double-breasted suits in brown, because he was the oldest of the group, so his suits should feel a little less fashionable. Balmain wears grays with sometimes a slight check, while Balenciaga sometimes wears a tie that has a bit more fashion about it. And then Dior, we see him in blue, sometimes in pinstripes, because he favored English style.” Also seen throughout the series is David Kammenos, who plays Jacques, a bar owner and Dior’s companion.
Also key to The New Look is Coco Chanel, played by Juliette Binoche. The famed couturier’s story is often told in tandem with Dior throughout the 10 episodes and doesn’t pull any punches about the tales of her friendships with Nazi officials during the war.
Unlike Dior, the House of Chanel did not contribute to the production, but Serreau said she adopted an inspirational approach to Binoche’s costumes. “There’s a difference between the aesthetics of Chanel and Dior, and I wanted to show that juxtaposition in what they wore,” she explained. “[Executive producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura] did a huge amount of research on her life, though there are very few photos of her for much of that period. But she was a pioneer in the emancipation of women, freeing them from the corset, which is why comfortable fabrics and that idea of casual chic informed a lot of what Juliette wore. I also used the bit of history that Chanel got inspiration from her lovers’ outfits, so I made her some high-waisted trousers and things like that.”
Any frequent visitor to the City of Light also might quickly notice that the series’ version of the Hotel Ritz — where Chanel famously resided during the war years — is not, in fact, the actual Hotel Ritz, but the Hotel Regina Louvre, located just steps from the Louvre Museum and partly recognizable by an oft-photographed gilded statue of Joan of Arc on horseback. “The interior of Hotel Ritz was renovated post-World War II, while the Hotel Regina maintains its classic appearance from the war,” Kessler explained. “So we decided that the more historically accurate opulence [of the Hotel Regina] would best suit the grandeur of how Coco Chanel lived during the four-year Nazi occupation of Paris, while most other Parisians experienced food and electricity rationing, curfews and the horrors of oppression.”
Emily Mortimer also enjoys a meaty role as Elsa Lombardi, a character primarily based on a Chanel confidante, Vera Bate Lombardi, a British subject whose two marriages included an Italian count closely associated with Benito Mussolini.
“Elsa’s character was a mixture of several characters,” Serreau notes. “When we see her early on, she’s been arrested and seeks out Chanel with only the clothes on her back, including a kimono-like robe. When we see Elsa and Chanel traveling later, the robe has been turned into a coat. I also made it so the coat could be turned inside-out into an evening dress, but we never got there [in filming]. I wanted to show that she was someone who was imaginative about fashion; I also exaggerated her collars from that period to make them feel a bit more fashionable and give a sense that she perhaps was an inspiration for Chanel.”
Of course, the build up throughout the series leads to a thrilling payoff in the finale for anyone who loves fashion history: not only in the 10 looks crafted as reproductions from Dior’s 90-outfit 1947 collection, but also with the most iconic design from that or perhaps any other year within the Dior oeuvre, The Bar Suit, which is also briefly seen in the 1955 Sorbonne scene.
“I didn’t know how it was built before we started building it,” Serreau says. “The structure is so elaborate, including the use of padding in the hips, and we were true to every detail. The buttonholes were copied exactly as they originally were; we used 12 yards of fabric in the skirt as Dior did himself. It was an architectural sculpture, really, and I learned from it. To see it on the model was extraordinary.”
“Our desire is to dazzle today’s audience when they see Christian Dior’s dresses in The New Look in a similar way to how viscerally his first audience felt the impact of his creativity, the beauty and fantasy. That was the ambition we set for ourselves,” Kessler adds. “It was essential that we see the original designs, Christian Dior’s sketches and that we recreate Monsieur Dior’s dresses as accurately as possible in order to honor his legacy … [and] now the dresses that we recreated are on exhibit at the Galerie Dior — The Dior Museum — in Paris, which is a testament to not only Monsieur Dior’s lasting vision, but also to Karen Serreau’s immense artistic talent.”
Visitors to Paris will be able to view Serreau’s replica costumes until May 13 at La Galerie Dior, the museum space adjacent to the house’s iconic atelier Christian Dior opened at 30 Avenue Montaigne in 1946. Alongside Dior’s original sketches, 1947 photographs and other archival materials, the replica costumes are showing in conjunction with the gallery’s current exhibition, which explores Dior’s connection with women.
Best of The Hollywood Reporter
