2024 Show
Todd A. Kessler · United States of America · English
Christian Dior and Coco Chanel go head to head in this fashionable but ultimately forgettable period drama
For a show about luxury brands (featuring A-list actors no less), The New Look is surprisingly tacky. If I didn’t know any better, I would’ve thought I was watching a History Channel reenactment, instead of a supposedly prestige Apple TV+ show about the murky histories of Coco Chanel (Juliette Binoche) and Christian Dior (Ben Mendelsohn). The lines are clunky, the delivery is stiff, and doing all this in English with forced French and German accents is certainly…a choice. It’s not that they’re poor accents, but the inconsistency is distracting; it often sounds like I’m listening to a dub, which I’ve never been a fan of. To his credit, director Todd A. Kessler knows how to make a fashionable show. The gowns are gorgeous, and the designs Chanel and Dior come up with look just as chic as the day they first came out. But that’s just one thread of multi-layered show. It may look good, but it crumbles under the weight of its ambitious goal to be a biopic, a period piece, and a war drama all at once. What a waste of a good cast, an interesting story, and a gorgeous collection of gowns!
The shocking story of how fashion icon Christian Dior and his contemporaries including Coco Chanel, Pierre Balmain, and Cristóbal Balenciaga navigated the horrors of World War Il and launched modern fashion.
Jumping back and forth between the ‘40s and 50s in Paris, A New Look explores the tricky and entangled histories of fashion icons Coco Chanel (Juliette Binoche) and Christian Dior (Ben Mendelsohn) and their ties with the war.
Emily Mortimer’s Elsa Lombardi is a breath of fresh air in this stuffy series. With personality and humor to spare, she’s the secret savior of the show. Maisie Williams is also remarkable as Catherine Dior, though the uneven writing does her character a disservice.
To quote Aretha Franklin when asked to comment on Taylor Swift: great gowns, beautiful gowns.
Renee Cuisia is the lead curator at A Good Movie to Watch. In her spare time, she likes to watch K-dramas and analyze them to death. She's also seen You've Got Mail one too many times but is still convinced it's one of the greatest films out there.
I have to say it, it’s CHANEL, not CHANNEL