This winter,
binge watching
promises to be very fashionable.
An avalanche of fashion series is about to hit streaming platforms.
Three great figures of the 20th century Parisian scene have inspired screenwriters and directors:
Cristóbal Balenciaga
(Disney+), Christian Dior (
The New Look
,
on Apple TV+ from February 14) and Karl Lagerfeld (
Kaiser Karl,
coming to Disney+) are thus the subject of biopics, in which we also meet Gabrielle Chanel, Hubert de Givenchy, Pierre Cardin and even Yves Saint Laurent.
The series
La Maison
n (coming on Apple TV+) will retrace the imaginary story of a modern-day family at the head of a fashion house prey to power struggles and wars of 'ego.
Lambert Wilson, Amira Casar and Carole Bouquet will play the main characters.
After a burst of documentaries devoted to creators (Simon Porte Jacquemus, Olivier Rousteing, etc.) and behind the scenes of the industry (
Luxe, the factory of dreams
), the time has come for television fiction.
It must be said that fashion is totally “videogenic”, both in terms of the intrigues that take place behind the scenes and its aesthetic quotient.
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Also read: Daniel Brülhl and Alex Lutz in the casting of
Kaiser Karl,
the biopic of Karl Lagerfeld on Disney+
A captivating universe
In the
fashion circus,
everything is more dramatic and exaggerated than in real life – a distorting mirror conducive to all plot twists.
“In these fashion destinies there are all the ingredients that make a good series successful: a plot as true as it is improbable, the marvelous, the braggadocio, the money, the betrayals… We know that the show will be assured, with the guarantee of three or four dramatic twists per episode,” assures Luca Marchetti, semiotician and fashion specialist.
Indeed, in the world of haute couture, everything comes together to captivate the public: star characters, rivalries between designers, sense of pomp and drama... It is the entire sociology of this micro-society which is exposed, hierarchies in the studios to the fratricidal wars between designers.
The Cristóbal Balenciaga
series
,
created by Lourdes Iglesias, explores these different themes.
This story in six episodes features actor Alberto San Juan in the shoes of the Spanish fashion designer, an enigmatic man who, long before Martin Margiela, fled journalists and refused communications operations.
The story begins when the designer presented his first Parisian haute couture collection, in 1937. We find on screen Anouk Grinberg playing Coco Chanel or even Nine d'Urso playing the designer's cabin model.
“What fascinated me most about his personality was his integrity and his lack of pretension in such a competitive and cutthroat world,” says Lourdes Iglesias, who portrays a man driven by his obsession with control and his almost quest for control. sick with perfection.
“In addition to being a great creator, he was an outstanding businessman.
Three thousand people worked for him,” she adds.
Cristóbal Balenciaga is inspired by the life of the Spanish fashion genius (Alberto San Juan, right.) David Herranz
“Money has always flowed freely in the fashion industry.
It naturally increases the scale of events, just as it signals close links with systems of power.
In fashion, everything is on a scale of 10, and the public loves scandal,” explains Luca Marchetti.
Low blows between designers and the dark hours of the Occupation are not ignored, the screenwriters not hiding the ambiguities of the creators during this period.
Over ten episodes, the series
The New Look,
directed by American Todd A. Kessler and broadcast on Apple TV+, explores the more than promising beginnings of Christian Dior, in the context of the Second World War.
On screen, a five-star cast.
Australian Ben Mendelsohn plays the fashion designer, while Maisie Williams, known for her role as Arya Stark in
Game of Thrones
,
plays his sister, Catherine Dior, a resistance fighter deported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp.
French actress Juliette Binoche plays the fiery Gabrielle Chanel.
“The fashion industry is the backdrop for
The New Look,
but it is the characters who lead the way, through their personal conflicts, their struggle to reconcile art and life, in a desperate time when everything was called into question,” explains Todd A. Kessler, who spent seven years consulting dozens of biographies, archives and interviews with the help of several fashion historians to carry out this project.
Behind the scenes of the dream
There is something fascinating about entering into the intimacy of these figures “heritated” by the storytelling of the big houses, because they had ended up becoming abstract, as if frozen in History.
Chanel tormented, in tears, pacing in her pajamas in her suite at the Ritz;
Cristóbal Balenciaga refusing to bow to the demagoguery of his shareholders, finding refuge in the arms of his companion;
Christian Dior hanging on the predictions of his clairvoyant, haunted by the disappearance of his sister;
Pierre Balmain screaming at his boss Lucien Lelong, whom he calls a vampire... This is precisely where fiction becomes interesting: when it allows us to recreate scenes that are not told in history books, even less in interviews from the time.
“A documentarian works from filmed archives, he is dependent on his historical sources,” explains director Olivier Nicklaus, author of several noted documentaries on fashion, such as
Azzedine Alaïa, a French couturier.
“With fiction, we can let the dogs loose, imagine everything and even question the unsaid things of an era.”
Thus, through these series, the homosexuality of the creators is addressed on screen.
The stars of haute couture take on another dimension, more human, conducive to arousing the empathy of the public, who only ask to discover behind the scenes.
“Series allow us to take care of the psychological writing of the characters, to probe their interiority,” explains Luca Marchetti.
Adapted from the book by journalist Raphaëlle Bacqué, the
Kaiser Karl
series intends to lift the veil on “the most mysterious” of fashion designers, by exploring his rivalry with Pierre Bergé and Yves Saint Laurent, but also his love story with Jacques by Bascher.
Kaiser Karl explores the exceptional destiny of Karl Lagerfeld (Daniel Brühl, left.) Backgrid UK / Bestimage
But, behind the drama, we also see that fashion is a “real” job, which is done in a white coat.
Balenciaga or Dior drape fabrics, filling their sketchbooks tirelessly... These series naturally highlight the fabrics and clothing models.
Some houses have also lent a hand to the costume designers.
Chanel thus participated in the creation of outfits for the character of Gabrielle Chanel, in the
Cristóbal Balenciaga series.
“Dior played an essential role in giving us access to its archives and to Monsieur Dior’s creations, so that we could recreate his first collection from 1947, and also the dresses presented in 1955, during his conference at the Sorbonne,” underlines Todd A. Kessler.
With these productions promised to a global audience, the communication challenges, as we can imagine, are important for brands.
“It’s about the
soft power
of the houses, and more broadly the influence of French fashion and Paris in the world,” analyzes Olivier Nicklaus.
By revealing behind the scenes of this dream world, the directors place fashion at the heart of contemporary culture, making it a societal, political as well as aesthetic subject.