I’m guessing that some of the people who manage the Dior fashion house whistle on their way to work during the day. They have one reason in particular to be in a good mood. Recently, there was the premiere of “The New Look”, a new series on Apple+, which has been named after founder Christian Dior’s famous collection from 1947.
It is also a series where Dior is the undisputed hero. At least compared to her rival, the fabled Coco Chanel. The Instagram feed of the fashion house is full of pictures of actors Ben Mendelsohn, Juliette Binoche and Maisie Williams, dressed in the finest of today’s Dior. Someone up there at the top thinks it’s perfectly fine that the story the series tells is the one that sticks.
KEEPING HIS PATH CLEAN: Christian Dior (Ben Mendelsohn) made ball gowns for the German occupiers, but the money he earned went to the resistance movement.
Photo: Apple+
For “The New Look” is not just about fashion, but about the two fashion designers’ performance during the German occupation of France. Here, Dior’s performance is impeccable. Yes, he designed ball gowns for the wives of German officers.
But he did it to prevent the fashion industry from being forcibly moved from Paris to Berlin. And he gave money to the resistance movement.
There his sister, Catherine, was involved, until she was captured and sent to a German labor camp.
Chanel’s history is more complicated, to say the least. It is well known that she had a relationship with a German officer, Hans Günther von Dincklage, which allowed her to stay at the luxury hotel The Ritz during the occupation. But this was long seen as a purely pragmatic move.
WELL DOCUMENTED: Coco Chanel (Juliette Binoche) had an affair with a German spy (Claes Bang), but it is unknown how much the tough businesswoman put into the relationship.
Photo: Apple+
Among other things, she got her lover to help get her nephew, André Palasse, released from German captivity. She had cared for André since her sister’s death, and there are those who believe that he was her own, secret son.
But then, in 2011, the book “Sleeping with the Enemy” by journalist Hal Vaughan came out. Vaughan refers to a number of documents that had been classified for many years, which showed that Chanel was listed as an informant for the Nazis.
She was also apparently asked by a German general to contact his friend, Winston Churchill, to start peace talks between him and the Germans.
At the same time, as recently as last autumn, new documents were released which suggested that Chanel had also been involved in the resistance movement. Thus, it is possible that she was a double agent.
WORKING TO THE LAST: Coco Chanel succeeded in making a comeback in French fashion after World War II, even though she had been a collaborator during the occupation.
Photo: AFP
These documents are disputed. But they were highlighted by the fashion house Chanel in the extensive exhibition “Gabrielle Chanel. Fashion Manifesto”. The exhibition is on display at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London until March 10, but has been sold out since early autumn.
I managed to snag a ticket myself earlier this winter. The exhibition, in which Chanel is heavily involved as a collaboration partner, acknowledges the dark spots on Chanel’s life during the occupation.
But they also emphasize the possible link to the resistance movement. And they flaunt outfit after outfit, one mesmerizing creation after another, showing how Chanel changed modern fashion forever. Message: Forget the collaborator, look at the designer, the innovator, the women’s liberator!
Gabrielle Chanel, as she was called before she was nicknamed Coco, was born out of wedlock and into extreme poverty in Saumur, France in 1883. She was put away in a convent, where she learned to sew.
RIVALS: Ben Mendelsohn and Coco Chanel play rivals Christian Dior and Coco Chanel in “The New Look”.
Photo: AFP
The years in the monastery marked her in several ways. The nuns’ costumes gave her a taste for simple clothes in mourning and white, which she would make throughout her life. And she became almost obsessed with escaping poverty. She would later talk about her fear that everything she had achieved would be taken away from her.
The rest is fashion history. The revolutionary clothes in elastic and breathable materials, which freed women from corsets and allowed them to run and move. The little black party dress. The quilted bag. Rows of pearl necklaces. The perfume Chanel No. 5.
All this is something close to the opposite of what characterized Christian Dior’s breakthrough a few decades later. His “New Look” collection of 1947 was opulent, hyper-feminine. There were narrow waists and big skirts. Meters upon meters of expensive fabrics.
THE ORIGINAL: The flared, bright jacket over the voluminous skirt is one of the most famous of the outfits from Christian Dior’s breakthrough collection.
Foto: Shutterstock editorial
Chanel despised it. But many women, in France and other Western countries, hungered for the glamorous. Dior was seen as the man who brought the joie de vivre back to Paris. But in the decades that followed, this period in fashion history was seen as stiff and reactionary, with Chanel representing the liberated and modern.
Now the question is whether a series like “The New Look”, and the new interest in what the two actually did during the war, can turn this ranking upside down.
Was Coco Chanel actually a Nazi? Those who believe it point to the fact that she was in conflict not only with von Dincklage, but also with the nationalist illustrator Paul Iribe. At the same time, she also had a long-standing relationship with the poet and resistance fighter Pierre Reverdy, who remained one of her closest friends.
GLAMOROUS VOICE: Christian Dior’s fabric-rich, swinging dresses made them associated with the ultimate in glamour. Here from a retrospective exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.
Photo: Mega
The worst thing she probably did was to use the Nazis’ Aryan laws to try to gain control over the perfume production of the house of Chanel. The perfume company of the Jewish Wertheimer brothers had been responsible for her perfumes, and Chanel thought too much of the profits went to them.
When the Nazis introduced laws to prevent Jews from owning anything, she saw her intention to try to take back what she thought was hers. The brothers, who had fled to the United States in 1940, incredibly chose to continue their collaboration with her after the war.
It is not, in fact, to say that she herself was anti-Semitic. The pragmatism that Chanel carried with her throughout her life could turn into pure cynicism. From a young age, she constantly replaced her lovers with new ones, who were richer and more distinguished.
RIVALS: Ben Mendelsohn and Coco Chanel play rivals Christian Dior and Coco Chanel in “The New Look”.
Photo: AFP
All as one ended up investing in her fashion house, or helping her in other ways. The one she truly loved, her husband Arthur “Boy” Capel, died young in a car accident. The grief is said to have inspired her to design “the little black one”.
So you can say that what she thought and meant is subordinate. In any case, the fact that she used anti-Semitic laws will remain as a stain on her legacy.
Some critics have felt that “The New Look”, where she fares worse than Christian Dior, still treats her too leniently.
HONORING THE DIOR LEGACY: Elle Fanning wore a Dior outfit clearly inspired by The New Look at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival.
Foto: INVISION
But it is and will be difficult to get hold of the woman who was an expert in spinning myths around herself. Even Hal Vaughan, who helped bring renewed attention to her ties to the Nazis, believes she was primarily an opportunist.
And the creators of “The New Look” introduce a conciliatory tone already in the first episode, where Christian Dior addresses a delighted crowd of listeners. About the years during the occupation, he simply says that everyone did what they felt they had to in order to survive.
2024-02-24 19:35:00
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