AGONY & BEAUTY

'The New Look' goes beyond fashion to explore how legendary Paris designers Dior and Chanel navigated the Second World War

- DEBRA YEO

Despite the fact it takes its title from the first couture collection of French fashion designer Christian Dior, Apple TV's "The New Look" is not about beautiful dresses.

Yes, facsimiles of Dior's designs make cameos in the 10-episode series, but it's really about a painful period of French history, the Nazi occupation of Paris during the Second World War, and how two of fashion's biggest names - Dior, played by Australian actor Ben Mendelsohn, and Coco Chanel, played by French film star Juliette Binoche survived it.

And in telling that story, the drama is as multi-layered as the fabric in one of the voluminous skirts Dior debuted in 1947.

Certainly, it would be easy to label Chanel the villain of the piece, since she collaborated with the occupiers - taking a Nazi lover, trying to use their laws to disenfranchise her Jewish business partners, even earning the Nazi code name of Westminster but her actions were in part motivated by her desire to rescue her beloved nephew from a German prison. She was also praised by some for closing her fashion house during the war while Dior, then working for couturier Lucien Lelong (John Malkovich), continued to create clothing that was worn by the wives and girlfriends of Nazis and their French enablers.

And yet, Dior allowed members of the French Resistance, including his younger sister, Catherine, to meet in his Paris apartment. Catherine, played by Maisie Williams of "Game of Thrones," became a war hero after she was captured and tortured by the Nazis, then sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, surviving both the camp and a forced death march as the Allies closed in.