'The New Look' review: On Apple TV+, a fashion flashback that's anything but lightweight

Apple TV+

“All I ever wanted to do was to design the most beautiful women’s clothing that ever existed.” – Ben Mendelsohn’s Christian Dior in “The New Look.”

In the opening scene of the visually striking and masterfully acted if at times overly dense period fashion drama “The New Look,” an adoring crowd has gathered at the Sorbonne’s Grand Amphithéâtre in 1955 to celebrate Ben Mendelsohn’s Christian Dior, who by that time was recognized as one of the most influential courtiers of the 20th century.

The floor is opened to questions, and a student asks if it’s true that during the German occupation of Paris, Coco Chanel closed shop and refused to design dresses for the wives of Nazis, while Dior kept designing and making money.

Dior responds: “Mademoiselle Chanel had her own business, and it was her decision to close. I was a nobody, working for Lucien Lelong. For those who lived through … four years Nazi occupation, darkest days of our lives … yes, we did sell our designs to Nazi wives and girlfriends. There is the truth, but there’s always another truth that lives behind it.”

The rest of the series proves that.

After that opener, we see a black-and-white title card that looks like something out of “Casablanca.” As a siren wails, we’re taken back to 1943, three years into the Nazi occupation of Paris. This is an early indication that while Todd A. Kessler’s 10-part series on Apple TV+ is inspired by the true-life stories of legendary fashion names such as Dior, Chanel (Juliette Binoche), Lelong (John Malkovich), Cristóbal Balenciaga (Nuno Lopes) and Pierre Balmain (Thomas Poitevin), among others, the requisite scenes of designers creating their works and models showcasing couture will often be mere window dressing for a much heavier and complex World War II melodrama.

For the already legendary Coco Chanel and the promising but little-known Christian Dior, the German occupation of Paris would force them to make decisions and take actions that would forever define their legacies. As events play out in “The New Look,” we’re reminded time and again that while Dior indeed designed dresses for the wives and girlfriends of Nazis while working for Lelong, he was also providing safe harbor for his beloved younger sister Catherine (Maisie Williams) and some of her colleagues in the French Resistance.

It was Chanel who had an intimate relationship with a German Abwehr spy, Chanel who tried to invoke Aryan laws to wrest control of her company from her Jewish business partners, Chanel who traveled to Madrid in an insane and futile attempt to deliver a message from Nazi leaders to Winston Churchill. As portrayed by Binoche in a brilliant, forceful and nuanced performance, Chanel isn’t a monster — but she does come across as a manipulative egomaniac capable of monstrous behavior.

Apple TV+

“The New Look” provides exquisite interior production design but jarring outdoor visuals, as we see the buildings of Paris covered in swastikas, while German soldiers patrol the streets and high-ranking Nazi officials take over the Ritz, throwing lavish parties while the French Vichy helps them deport tens of thousands of Jews to death camps.

Long past her glory days of creating the little black dress and the iconic Chanel No. 5 perfume, a financially strapped Coco is holed up at the Ritz, desperate to regain power in her company and all too willing to enlist the help of her lover, the duplicitous German spy Hans Günther von Dincklage, aka “Spatz” (played to oily perfection by Claes Bang).

Meanwhile, in a storyline that remains largely parallel, Christian Dior is the star designer for the couturier Lucien Lelong (John Malkovich in a terrific and surprisingly restrained performance), who tries to shield his staff from what they all know — that the only customers for their ball gowns are the wives and girlfriends of Nazi officials.

Much of the first half of “The New Look” is World War II intrigue, with Coco using her connections to facilitate the release of her beloved nephew André (Joseph Olivennes) and becoming inexorably tied to the Nazis, and Catherine Dior captured and tortured by the Nazis, with Christian doing everything he can to save her. In this context, Christian’s insecurities about following his dreams and Coco’s toxic relationship with her frenemy Elsa Lombardi (Emily Mortimer) carry relatively muted dramatic urgency.

The post-war segments focus more on Christian finally setting up his own house, though Catherine’s horrific experiences continue to reverberate. At times, we grow frustrated with Christian’s reluctance to take control of his own life and finally express himself, but in the hands of the wonderful Ben Mendelsohn, we come to feel great empathy and admiration for Dior.

We often talk about how many streaming series would benefit from fewer episodes; in the case of “The New Look,” I’m wondering if the material might have been better served with TWO full seasons, with the first focusing on the war years and the second providing a more detailed look at the aftermath, and the respective careers of Chanel and Dior and the houses they built. Still, this is a solid and substantial look at the power of creating hope by making something beautiful in the aftermath of a most horrible time.