'The New Look' and the Things That Make Life Worth Living
Coco Chanel Was Stylish, But Wrong About Tans and Nazis
In 1987, Klaus Barbie was being tried in France for crimes against humanity, crimes committed while he was in charge of the Gestapo in Lyon - he was “the Butcher of Lyon” - between 1942 and 1944. That same year, I was living in Paris, studying at the Sorbonne and working as an au pair. I looked after a three-year-old girl whose parents were physics teachers at a Parisian lycee. They were about as warm as one might expect physics teachers to be, but at least they left me to my own devices most of the time. They considered me debrouillarde, meaning they believed I could figure things out on my own. They complained to me a good deal about their previous jeune fille, who was British and not so debrouillarde. She cried a lot, they said with a snort of derision. I cried a lot too, but not in front of them.
When not studying French poetry or grammar, or doing my au pair duties – I had never ironed so much in my life, but at least I had learned how to make a decent vinaigrette (indeed, I learned what a vinaigrette was) — I was enjoying my flat near the rue Mouffetard and the surrounding pleasures. By mid-June of 1987, I was also fixated on the Barbie trial. It was televised – a rarity for France. Few French people failed to have an opinion on the matter, usually as passionately held as their views on wine, cheese or the moral, cultural and intellectual inferiority of Americans. Every French school child could (can they still? I wonder) recite General de Gaulle’s Appel a la Resistance of June 18, 1940, and Barbie was responsible for the death of France’s resistance hero, Jean Moulin.
But the trial represented something more than that – a schism from way back. I knew a bit, at that point in my life, about l’affaire Dreyfus, about the great divide it had caused (or perhaps revealed and entrenched) in French society, and about how that schism had never truly disappeared, manifesting itself again under Vichy. (There are few better sources of Vichy history than Robert Paxton.) The war still hits a nerve in France, and a desire to forget. In her book, La Seduction: How the French Play the Game of Life, Elaine Sciolino writes, “An example of France’s amnesia is a plaque affixed to the wall of the Hotel Lutetia, an Art Deco landmark on the Left Bank in Paris. It identifies the hotel as the reception center for returning deportees and prisoners of war in 1945; it says nothing about its sinister role between 1940 and 1944 as the Paris headquarters of the German Army’s intelligence operations during the Occupation.”
One deportee was Catherine Dior, the beloved younger sister of Christian Dior. She had a been a member of the French resistance and deported to Ravensbruck, a concentration camp for women in Germany. (De Gaulle’s niece, Genevieve, was also a resistant and deported to Ravensbruck.) Catherine survived and returned to France, as did Genevieve. Dior named his first perfume, Miss Dior, after his sister. She worked with her brother for the rest of his life and with his couture house and the Dior Foundation for the rest of hers, in some capacity. Despite what she had experienced - including being tortured by the Gestapo to the point that biographers have said it is why she could not have children - she never lost the love of elegance she shared with Christian.
I remember reading that one of the requests female concentration camp survivors made to Allied soldiers was for lipstick. One American, helping Holocaust survivors in a displaced person camp, wrote home to his wife requesting she send even one tube of lipstick if she was able, as it could be shared by several of the women. It wasn’t only the women who sought uplift via fashion and cosmetics. An ambulance driver “had fabric and sewing supplies imported to the Bad Gastein camp so its inhabitants could make neckties, which were a sign of respect.” People need such things at the best and worst moments - probably more in dark moments. Far from frivolity, it can be an elixir, a salvation, among the things that make life worth living. This is a central theme of The New Look, a series examining the lives and careers of Christian Dior (played by Ben Mendelsohn) and Coco Chanel (played by Juliette Binoche), during and after World War II.
The series opens post-war, with Chanel planning a haute couture comeback. She is speaking in fairly contemptuous tones about Dior. A triumphant Dior, meanwhile, is speaking before cheering students at the Sorbonne, the first fashion designer ever invited to the prestigious institution. His 1947 “new look” brought life back to France, though he looks uncomfortable in the hero role. After the applause, a student asks him about his having made dresses for the wives of Nazis during the war, while Chanel had closed down her factory, ostensibly as a nod to the somber times. The moderator of the events attempts to change the subject but is stopped by Dior. No, he says, the question is fine. He points out that there is the truth, but there can also be “another truth that lives behind it.” The series attempts to unravel these truths and - so far - is doing so impressively.
Chanel was what the kids today might call “fierce” or a “girl-boss.” She was brilliant and talented and also profoundly antisemitic, a Nazi sympathizer, spiteful and dishonest. She was the lover of a Gestapo spy, an informer for the Nazis and possibly a spy for the Germans herself. She dined and went to parties with senior Nazi officials. (Most of this was unknown until Hal Vaughan’s book Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel’s Secret War, a portrait of the designer with not a bit of sugar-coating. Though Chanel was interrogated after the war - by Malcolm Muggeridge, among others - the French government never made that information public.) Her closing down her couture house during the war was far more likely to have been done to spite striking workers, as opposed to a moral stance against the Germans. She was one of the most celebrated women of her time, and she used her connections to escape a treason charge.
One truth behind her murkiness is that she loved her nephew, a French soldier, and used her status to have him released from a POW camp. Another truth is that she tried to use the odious German Aryan laws against her Jewish business partners. Still another is that, as Paris was liberated and an orgy of punishment against collaborators began, she threw friends under the bus to protect herself, cheered for the Allied soldiers and handed them bottles of perfume to bring home to their wives and mums (she had previously given perfume to German soldiers). The actress Arletty - a social acquaintance of Chanel, who also enjoyed the company of the enemy - was pulled up in front of a raging mob to have her head shaved and a swastika drawn on her skull, a fate Coco escaped. (Arletty was “imprisoned” in a French chateau after the war and did not work much again, though she had a small role in The Longest Day.)
In juxtaposition, we see Catherine stripped and degraded, having her head shaved upon arrival at Ravensbruck. Her brother had tried to use his friendship with a Swedish diplomat to help her, but was unsuccessful. Dior’s truths are more convincing, and pack more of a punch than Chanel’s. Dior was a decent and sympathetic fellow who had vision and creativity to spare. During the war, he was not a well-known figure, certainly not on Chanel’s level. He did design - working for Lucien Lelong (played by the vibrant John Malkovich - what a cast!) - dresses for the wives of Germans. As he explains to the students at the Sorbonne, he had mouths to feed, his father and little sister to support. He did not party with Nazis or sell out friends. His truth is not as muddy or messy.
The New Look is dialogue-heavy, but some scenes don’t require talk: when Dior is told by French officials that his sister will be returning, he waits at the train station along with others aching for their loved ones. They are all holding lilacs and singing La Marseillaise. It is a moment of hope but rather than family members running toward them, the scene is painful: skeletal, shaved figures emerge from the train, some still in their striped camp “uniforms.” Some are dead, carried out on stretchers. Catherine is nowhere. She returns at a later date, in terrible shape, but at that moment, Dior is in despair, convinced she is dead. “How are we going to forgive them?” he asks (meaning, presumably, the Germans. Or maybe humanity in general). “How are we going to move on?” He describes the hollowed-out eyes of the returnees. The hopelessness, he says, is predatory. But he does see - eventually - a way forward, a “return to joy.” People need to feel, to dream, to see beauty, to build a garden. He makes a decision to start his own couture house. In two years, he would give women the Bar Suit, as influential as Chanel’s Little Black Dress of 1926.
There are five more episodes in the series (I am assuming it is only one season). I must say that Binoche is just extraordinary. Mendelsohn’s Dior is the one who steals your heart, but Binoche’s unpleasant, self-serving Chanel brings everything to life. You cannot look away from her. I am keen to see where it goes, if they will try to redeem Chanel. Some critics say The New Look has been too easy on her, but I - so far - do not see that. One thing is clear - life is not fair. Dior died in his early 50s of a heart attack. Chanel lived in luxury to nearly the age of 90.
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Some notes a propos, more or less:
These issues are tough. I know that, for example, Maurice Chevalier was initially characterized as having been a complete sleaze and collaborator during the war. After his death, it was revealed that he had been protecting Jewish friends and family.
My favourite perfume is Diorissimo, heavy on the lily-of-the-valley. Dior and Chanel were both fans of making women smell like flowers and I couldn’t agree more. Give me gardenia, tuberose, jasmine, honeysuckle, lily-of-valley! I don’t need no stinkin’ sandalwood, musky stuff.
Coco Chanel helped popularize tans. Another reason to disapprove of her. I say we all go back to the time when being translucent meant you were an aristocrat.
Bill Blass, the wonderful American fashion designer, served heroically in the Ghost Army in WWII.
A cute movie that features French fashion is Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, in which an English cleaning woman uses her savings to buy a Dior dress.
My oldest brother once made a hilarious comment about women who are “defiantly dowdy.” (Note - this term could also apply to some men.) We were at a folk concert and with one exception - me - every woman in the room was dressed in bulky, sloppy, wrinkled clothes. I don’t know what we expected at a folk concert, but still, it was funny. He gazed around the room, looked back at me and said, “You’re the only woman here wearing anything that indicates you are a woman.” He then dismissed the rest as “defiantly dowdy” making sure to point out it was a different matter altogether than accidental or circumstantial (e.g., the pandemic) dowdiness.
Another series I recommend is Masters of the Air, based on Donald Miller’s book of the same name. It represents another facet of the war: the young men who freed us, at great risk to themselves, many dying, many permanently injured.