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Nadja Sayej

The latest television show to live rent-free in our heads is Apple TV+’s The New Look, out on February 14.
The series, set in Nazi-occupied Paris during the second world war (1939-1945), follows one of the biggest feuds in fashion history – namely, the one between French fashion designers Christian Dior, played by Ben Mendelsohn, and Coco Chanel (Juliette Binoche).
Written and directed by Todd Kessler, the show has an all-star cast that includes John Malkovich and Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams.
The other star of the show, of course, is the costumes – which are within the realm of costume designer Karen Muller Serreau, who has worked on various projects like The Serpent Queen, Now You See Me and Stillwater.
UK-born but having lived extensively in Paris, she says: “Being English but with an almost native feel for France, my experience has given me a wider vision of form and style.”

The New Look follows Chanel’s alleged involvement with the Nazis in Paris as well as the arrest and deportation to a concentration camp of Dior’s sister (Williams), and also features creatives from that time, such as artist Pablo Picasso and movie star Arletty.
The show also depicts fashion designers such as Pierre Balmain, Hubert de Givenchy and Cristóbal Balenciaga, helping to put faces to the names behind some of the top luxury brands we know today.

Serreau says that all the costumes were made by her and her team, and that no vintage pieces were used. “I don’t always do period pieces recreating things absolutely or completely as they were, but creating things as they really were made,” she says.
“That’s what is important – how the Dior items were made and getting the beauty of that.”
The New Look captures a key moment in fashion just as France was being liberated from Nazi occupation, when Dior was challenging Chanel’s dominance as the city’s must-have designer of the time. His looks helped define the modern look for women returning to everyday life.

“One of the things I wanted to get across was the importance of the fashion world,” says Serreau. “The series was about the surviving of them all, the fashion designers.
“It’s really the importance of how all these things survived, and that’s the importance of the show and fashion world today. During the actual wartime, fashion places basically had shut down. Balmain worked. But during the wartime, there weren’t many people working.”
The first few episodes show the rumbling tension between Dior and Chanel, which Serreau wanted to capture through costume design.
“Between Chanel and Dior, I was going for the feminine side of Dior and a slightly more masculine side of Chanel,” she says. “It shows the difference of how they worked, one coming from a female, the other coming from a man.”
We took out most of the colour – there wasn’t much colour in general, it was a grey time, until we got to the liberation of Paris
Karen Muller Serreau on dressing the cast of The New Look
The series also captures how tough times were for Parisian women, who still wanted to look stylish despite the tragedy of the war. “I really wanted to use ideas of reusing things,” says Serreau.
“Although they’re not things on the front line, I made hats from old bits and pieces of cloth to show that. We showed how women used old things to make new things.”
One hallmark character in the series is Glenn Close’s Carmel Snow, the then-editor-in-chief of American magazine Harper’s Bazaar. Snow famously discovered magazine stars like editor Diana Vreeland, photographer Richard Avedon and writer Truman Capote.

Snow wore Balenciaga for much of her life and was the one to coin the phrase “The New Look” to describe Dior’s 1947 collection, which helped put him on the fashion industry’s map. She also had her own distinct style.
“I looked at a lot of pictures of her, and knowing she was influenced by Balenciaga, I used that as inspiration,” says Serreau.
“She had an elegant but slightly eccentric look to her in all the documentation we found on her. That’s what I was trying to get across.”
But Serreau’s task was not limited to capturing the elite and their high-fashion looks – Picasso’s crisp white collared shirts, Chanel’s silk blouses – as she also had to dress the people around them as well.

“We took out most of the colour – there wasn’t much colour in general, it was a grey time, until we got to the liberation of Paris, where we injected red, white and blue everywhere, symbolising the French flag,” says Serreau.
As a result, she resorted to boxy, military designs for much of the 10-episode series until Dior unveils his 1947 collection, she recalls. “We were relieved when we got to The New Look at the end, and just went wild with fabric.”


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Dior, Chanel, Balenciaga – fashion’s the word in Apple TV+’s The New Look; series’ costume designer on capturing the looks of the 1940s

Juliette Binoche as Coco Chanel in The New Look. Credit: Apple TV+.

Ben Mendelsohn as designer Christian Dior in The New Look, which follows the feud between Dior and Coco Chanel in Nazi-occupied Paris. Photo: Apple TV+

Juliette Binoche stars as Coco Chanel in The New Look. Photo: Apple TV+

Maisie Williams stars as Catherine Dior in The New Look. Photo: Apple TV+

Ben Mendelsohn stars as designer Christian Dior in The New Look. The New Look captures a key moment in fashion, when Dior was challenging Chanel’s dominance in Paris. Photo: Apple TV+

Juliette Binoche as Coco Chanel in The New Look. Photo: Apple TV+

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Entertainment

The New Look on Apple TV+ depicts the feud between French fashion designers Christian Dior and Coco Chanel, set against the backdrop of Nazi-occupied Paris
The show’s costume designer, Karen Muller Serreau, explains how her team captured the look and feel of the period as well as the rivalry between the designers


Costume designer Karen Muller Serreau explains how she used fashion to tell a story in Apple TV+’s The New Look, which follows the feud between Christian Dior and Coco Chanel in Nazi-occupied Paris.


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