"The resistance is back, in a somewhat unexpected context: #TheNewLook, a sweeping biopic of couture designers Christian Dior and Coco Chanel in the 1940s. For most American viewers, likely most contemporary French viewers as well, #Dior and #Chanel are famous logos, famous silhouettes, famous scents. Their existence as public figures, the faces of their #brands, is largely over. It may then come as some small surprise that their histories are inextricably tangled up with #Nazism.
The show, created by TV veteran Todd Kessler, is a star-studded, visually sumptuous, morally pretzeled epic about the rise and fall of these great #fashionhouses during and after the war.
In ways both ingenious and stilted, the show attempts to intertwine this political drama with the high-fashion revolution. What sacrifices does freedom require? Which compromises are too dear to protect family? What’s the cost of Nazi collaboration? The New Look doesn’t so much answer these questions as let us feel their weight for 10 episodes."
Thoughtful review of really interesting TV show. The reviewer says "it would be easy to play Chanel as either a monster or a victim of circumstance. But Juliette Binoche is cagey and versatile enough to let her almost always be both." Perhaps. But I am yet to meet a French person over 30 who doesn't get really upset when they are confronted with the fact that one of the biggest icons of 20th century French civilisation was a Nazi collaborator.
#controversy #highfashion #luxury #myth #France #history #politics
Economist
1w💕