The New Look Review: Beauty and Betrayal in Wartime Paris

Paris, 1943. As Nazi troops patrol the streets, two titans of French fashion are making fraught choices that will haunt their legacies. Christian Dior sketches gowns for officers’ wives to provide for his family, while his sister Catherine risks her life with the Resistance. Meanwhile, the legendary Coco Chanel shutters her atelier and takes up with a Nazi officer named Spatz, soon finding herself entangled in espionage and betrayal.

When the war ends, Christian emergesbroken but determined to rebuildthe world one New Look dress at a time. But Coco’s faustian bargain with Fascism threatens her hard-won status as the grande dame of couture. This juicy premise serves up scintillating drama in Apple TV+’s The New Look. With smoldering stars like Juliette Binoche as Coco and Ben Mendelsohn as Christian, it promises the glossy escapism that prestige television does so well.

Yet behind the glamour, disquieting questions linger. Can even the most ravishing gowns distract from wartime horrors? Does beauty excuse evil? Tracking the schemes and sacrifices of two cunning couturiers, The New Look may fascinate fashionistas. But its deeper message could give anyone pause. In occupied Paris, not even legends get to choose their own legacy.

Flawed Icons in Troubled Times

In occupied Paris, fashion must go on—even as Nazi uniforms proliferate on the avenues. Such is the ominous backdrop facing two storied couturiers in The New Look. Christian Dior sketches formalwear for officers’ paramours, his somber eyes acknowledging the compromise. The pay goes to support his sister Catherine’s underground activism, yet each shimmering gown leaves Christian haunted.

Meanwhile, the legendary Coco Chanel shuts her doors in a show of patriotic defiance. But as the occupation drags on, her integrity soon frays. Before long, Chanel finds herself entangled with a Nazi officer named Spatz, currying favor to reclaim her company from Jewish partners. Her slippery slope towards collaboration raises the story’s central question: Can even couture legends control their fate when society frays? Or do circumstances force us all into morally gray terrain?

As the Liberation nears, Dior emerges with visionary zeal—and a “New Look” collection that will revolutionize women’s fashion for a new era. But Chanel faces only scorn for her opportunism and a reckoning she refuses to accept. While both leads deliver nuanced performances, Chanel makes the most compelling antihero. Juliette Binoche leans into her machinations and denials, keeping us gripped despite her reprehensible deeds.

These dueling arcs offer thought-provoking portraits of two complex pioneers facing their most daunting test. How each couturier navigates the ethical quagmire leads to drastically different finales. While Dior inspires healers with his grace under pressure, Chanel serves as a cautionary tale of pride before the fall. By spotlighting icons at their most human, The New Look suggests that not even the rich and glamorous escape WWII’s moral toll.

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Finding Humanity Amid the Horrors

The New Look makes a bold claim: that even during humanity’s darkest hours, “creation helped return spirit and life to the world.” Through the lens of fashion, it explores whether beauty can blossom amid the rubble or whether art inevitably requires some form of compromise. As Paris comes undone at the seams, Dior and Chanel give very different answers.

For Dior, creation serves as a lifeline, a way to process grief and envision renewal. Each dress he sketches carries the memory of suffering—his sister Catherine’s, his model Renée’s, his entire nation’s—but transforms it into something luminous. Like Dior says, true art requires intimacy with agony.

Yet his peer Coco Chanel takes a starkly divergent path. Craving lost glories as her boutique gathers dust, she soon exploits Nazi ties for personal gain with chilling pragmatism. “Survival justifies everything,” Chanel declares when questioned. It’s a philosophy that allows her to betray business partners to the Reich without a second thought.

And herein lies the show’s central tension: Can we separate an artist from her actions? Should we judge creations tainted by sin? There’s a reason its title references Dior’s life-affirming “New Look” collection rather than Chanel’s many new lows.

Still, The New Look stops short of clear-cut verdicts. It certainly doesn’t excuse or vindicate Coco’s misdeeds, no matter how some critics protest. If anything, it lays bare her hypocrisy and self-interest for all to see. Yet the show also pointedly avoids framing Dior as a saint. Flawed and afraid, he nonetheless discovers power in creation.

Ultimately, The New Look suggests that the path through darkness differs for each person. But those who leave beauty behind them just might light the way.

A Study In Contrasts

In the dueling lead roles, Juliette Binoche and Ben Mendelsohn deliver masterclasses in opacity. As Coco Chanel, Binoche brandishes brittle wit as a weapon, striking before anyone can expose the doubts beneath her bravado. She captivates with savage charm right up until the walls close in. Meanwhile as Christian Dior, Mendelsohn radiates a haunted delicacy. Pain flickers across his face like lace patterns as he struggles to reconcile family ties, artistic integrity, and simple survival.

Together these paired performances embody the era’s roiling tensions. Flinty yet vulnerable, Binoche makes us understand what motivates Chanel’s self-preservation at all costs even as we recoil. Wounded yet determined, Mendelsohn reveals fleeting glimpses of the visionary to come. If Chanel represents the consummate pragmatist, her nemesis is the quintessential romantic.

The leads find superb foils in the supporting cast. As Catherine Dior, Maisie Williams blends steely conviction with limpid empathy, capturing the Resistance heroine’s blaze and her scars. With trademark panache, Glenn Close rules the runway as Harper’s Bazaar editor Carmel Snow. And as Chanel’s Nazi officer lover Spatz, Claes Bang exudes louche menace beneath cultivated charm.

With Gestapo boots striking the cobblestones outside, these stunning performances remind us that creation and destruction often spring from the same human impulses. By manifesting the era’s roiling undercurrents through unforgettable characters, The New Look suggests that grace emerges not by banishing darkness, but subsisting within it.

Behind the Seams: Assessing the Construction

For all its gorgeous embellishments, certain structural flaws keep The New Look from achieving couture-level excellence. Uneven pacing and narrative detours diminish the power of its central story. And for a show about pioneering designers, it spends remarkably little time unpacking their creative process.

The biggest stumble comes down to focus. Spanning a decade, the plot meanders across disjointed timelines that obscure more than enlighten. Key relationships feel undeveloped as a result, while potent themes emerge only to drift away half-formed. Streamlining the storyline around seminal events could lend sharper emotional stakes.

When it comes to portraying the alchemy of design itself, the clarity of vision also falters. We get tantalizing peeks at Dior’s innovative volumes and silhouettes, but too little context around his seismic shift in aesthetic. And besides occasional sharp suits, the legendary Balenciaga seems more like a generic sounding board than the radical he was. For a series built on the premise that fashion sustained culture during trauma, the absence of any deep analysis feels like a missed opportunity.

Still, the show delivers handsomely on production value, perfectly capturing the era’s surface allure. Extravagant galas brim with champagne fizz and finery, while ateliers hum with fabrics waiting to be draped and pinned. And the costume design itself stands out as a highlight, meticulously recreating archival New Look pieces. From billowing ballgowns to smartly tailored suits, the array of stunning looks nearly compensates for the story’s loose stitching.

Yet even the most dazzling dressing can’t distract from the show’s most glaring flaw: the unsettling use of AI to populate dance floors and city streets. Perhaps filmmakers thought digitally forged partygoers and crudely inserted archival clips would lend historical authenticity. But these unnatural visual effects only rip us out of the scene, undermining the show’s emotional integrity.

In the end, The New Look offers intermittent moments of splendor without fully realizing its potential for greatness. Like an imperfectly constructed garment, it flatters without ever feeling flawless. But oh, when the seaming aligns just right and the layers sweep perfectly into place—that’s when we glimpse the masterpiece it could have been.

Signing Off with Style

For all its pratfalls, The New Look remains compulsively watchable thanks to magnetic performances and a premise brimming with promise. As starry escapism, it entertains; as moral allegory, it provokes. Audiences may crave more depth, but the surface glamour dazzles nonetheless.

Ultimately the show falls short of greatness by losing itself in tangents and failing to develop its central themes. Neither fashion’s phoenix-like revival nor its fallen idols receive their full due. But could a more focused edit amplify the strengths while minimising flaws? Perhaps.

The bottom line is that The New Look offers a riveting peek behind the seams of history for fashion aficionados and neophytes alike. Just don’t expect Dior-level refinement. Its uneven construction includes flashes of brilliance alongside peculiar lapses in quality.

For fans of glossy period drama eager to suspend disbelief, The New Look mostly delivers on aesthetic appeal. Yet those who crave couture-worthy storytelling would do well to manage expectations. This series follows its own uneven beat.

But let it never be said that The New Look lacks ambition or allure. Like the iconic designs it celebrates, it fearlessly breaks the mold—and introduces an alluring new silhouette for television along the way. History will judge whether its vision stands the test of time. For now, it remains a fascinating curio for adventurous viewers willing to celebrate signature style over flawless execution.

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