(Paris) Fashion history enthusiasts have two events in the coming weeks: the Spanish series Balenciagawhich begins Friday on Disney +, and the American series The New Look dedicated to Christian Dior, from February 14 on Apple TV.
Disney+ will also soon announce the broadcast of The Kaiser, dedicated to Karl Lagerfeld and in the final stages of production. The German designer is also the protagonist of a four-episode documentary on Canal+, directed by Guillaume Perez and Anne-Solen Douguet.
With Balenciaga (six episodes) and The New Look (ten), two visions confront each other in an era that shook Europe: before and after the Second World War.
Paris is then the epicenter of the cultural world, particularly fashion. A whole generation of dazzling couturiers parade there and impose their style: Coco Chanel, Jeanne Lanvin, Elsa Schiaparelli… and the Spaniard Cristóbal Balenciaga, who arrives in the French capital from San Sebastián, in the Basque Country, and makes his mark there. first parade in 1937.
The son of a fisherman and a seamstress, he was already famous in his native country where, at the age of twelve, he sewed a dress for the Marquise de Casa Torres. Decades later, in 1960, he designed the wedding dress of his granddaughter, Queen Fabiola of Belgium.
PHOTO FROM APPLE TV SITE
The New Look
“Cristóbal was the only true fashion designer among all of us. The others were just stylists,” Coco Chanel said of this competitor with whom she shared a mutual admiration and rivalry.
A legend of haute couture, Balenciaga (1895-1972) is famous not only for his mastery of the needle, but also for the secrecy that surrounds it. There are almost no photos of him, he refused to greet the audience after his parades and his interviews are extremely rare.
It is the Spanish actor Alberto de Juan who embodies this complex character, obsessive in his work, striving to hide his homosexuality, and whose position during the period of German Occupation remains mysterious.
When will Coco Chanel be?
The Nazis closed his workshop for three months, officially for “inciting rebellion through provocative hats.” In reality, it was because he was going to Spain to buy fabrics, without declaring them, in order to keep his business going. However, he did not hesitate to dress the wives and mistresses of German dignitaries.
After the war, Balenciaga broke dress codes with its extra-large collars, elbow-cut sleeves and daring pieces from the 1950s, such as its tonneau line.
At the heart of the Apple TV series, Christian Dior (1905-1957) caused a sensation in 1947 with the New Look, which marks a revival in post-war fashion. Younger, with a certain flair, he accompanied the emergence of ready-to-wear, omnipresent from the 1960s.
This American production shot in English addresses not only the character of the fashion designer (played by Australian actor Ben Mendelsohn), but also the fate of his sister Catherine (Maisie Williams from Game Of Thrones), resistant and deported to a concentration camp.
Juliette Binoche plays Coco Chanel.
Lourdes Iglesias, the director of Balenciagaentrusted the role of the famous “Mademoiselle” to another Frenchwoman, Anouk Grinberg.
Suspected of collaboration with the Germans during the Liberation, Gabrielle Chanel (1883-1971) had an affair with a German baron, but also tried to negotiate with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill a peace agreement between Germany and Great Britain. Brittany as the Occupation was coming to an end.
“She’s one of the most fascinating characters there is, even if she spoke morning and evening about men! », smiles Lourdes Iglesias, who sees in the life of Coco Chanel the material for “a series of its own”.