Films about fashion designers: Chanel, Balenciaga, Christian Dior

Lhe quiet luxury trend and, indeed, the discreet luxury of Successionthe return of fuchsia and Barbiethe techno-minimalist aesthetic Y2K and Euphoria … And again, “rewinding” streaming, college style and Gossip Girlthe obsession with the Fendi Baguette developed with Sex and the City Among the keys to the success of a series or film is the look of the characters. MWhat happens if the person who thought of fashion first takes the leading role?

Cinema loves stylists

We’re not just talking about cameo by Pierpaolo Piccioli, Valentino’s creative director, in one of the latest episodes of The Morning Show. Or Brunello Cucinelli, who has just asked Giuseppe Tornatore to produce a docu-film about him. 2024 is the year of stories of famous designers, on the small and big screen.

It was presented at the last Turin Film Festival Gianni Versace. The emperor of dreams by Mimmo Calopresti. Between fiction and documentary, it reconstructs the designer’s life from his childhood in Reggio Calabria, in his mother’s tailor’s shop studying and dreaming of Magna Graecia, to the years of success in Milan, together with his brothers, to glide to America through the testimonies of great photographers and the models he worked with (there is even his friend Carla Bruni who sings a requiem for him). The release date of the film is not certainjust as that of was not disclosed High & Low – John Galliano, documentary by Oscar-winning director Kevin Macdonald on the rise, decline (and rehabilitation) of John Galliano, the current creative director of Maison Martin Margiela who lost his role as designer at Dior when, in 2011, he was arrested, drunk, in a Paris club for having unleashed a fight and hurling anti-Semitic and racist insults.

Dior Vs Chanel: classy duelists

On the other hand, the launches of two TV series are scheduled for the beginning of the year on Apple TV and Disney+ which, perhaps, will change our perspective on some legendary style icons: stories that intertwine and unravel the tangle of rivalry, esteem and envy of the various fashion designers who met and clashed in Paris in the last century. The New Look debuts on Apple TV+ on February 14th. Set during the Nazi occupation of Paris and in the post-war period, produced and directed by Todd A. Kessler, recounts the escalation of Christian Dior (played by Ben Mendelsohn) and the relationship with his contemporaries, from Lucien Lelong (John Malkovich) to Pierre Balmain, Cristóbal Balenciaga and Hubert de Givenchy. But most of all the antagonism with Gabrielle Chanelan impeccable one Juliette Binoche.

The two couldn’t be more different. On the one hand Monsieur Dior, born to a family of industrialists, the childhood spent in the Eden of the villa in Granville. In 1939 she served France on the southern front while her sister Catherine (in the series Maisie Williams), better known as Miss Dior who inspired the famous perfume, fought in the Resistance. Tarot cards and gardens are his passion. «If you take nature as an example you will never go wrong» she said. And in fact the corolla of his beloved flowers becomes a famous skirt. With him, rich and sinuous femininity blossoms again, a no-half-measures response to the poverty following the Second World War, with haute couture on its knees and meters of fabric stripped away. Therefore in 1947, faced with the pomp of his first fashion show, the editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar, Carmel Snow, exclaimed: «My dear Christian, his clothes have such a new look».

Coco is the counterpart. At the height of her success, she turns up her nose at the emergence of a competitor with a style diametrically opposed to hers, she who since 1918 had revolutionized women’s wardrobes with practical and scaffolding-free sheath dresses and suits. During the invasion of Paris she moved to the Hotel Ritz, headquarters of German soldiers and diplomats, including Baron Hans Günther von Dincklage, with whom she was having an affair. And although documents have recently been made public which reveal her involvement also on the Resistance front, it is proven that Chanel collaborated with the SS as a Nazi spy (codenamed Westminster, after the duke who was her lover).

Balenciaga, the Spanish giant

There is only one element on which the two rivals agree: Balenciaga. «Haute Couture is a great orchestra that only he knows how to conduct» said Dior, while for Chanel he was «the only true couturier». The drama series Cristóbal Balenciaga is dedicated to the Spanish designer, exclusively on January 19th Disney+created by Lourdes Iglesias and 12-time Goya Award winners Aitor Arregi, Jon Garaño and Jose Mari Goenaga. The actor Alberto San Juan will be the architect of haute couture, as Givenchy called it, in the period from the Spanish Civil War to the early seventies. Very reserved, very few interviews granted in his life, the son of a seamstress and a fisherman, his story of redemption is once again interconnected with those of his Parisian colleagues, present in the fiction.

Waiting for Karl

He’s from another generation Karl Lagerfeld. The long-awaited series dedicated to him, Kaiser Karl, is shrouded in mystery (launch is scheduled for next winter). Produced by Gaumont and Disney+, written by Isaure Pisani-Ferry and Jennifer Have e taken from the biography of Raphaëlle Bacqué, it turns the spotlight on the person who revived the fortunes of the Chanel maison after the death of the founder. According to Variety, Daniel Brühl will take on his role – always only blacks and whites – retracing his career starting from ’72, when the thirty-eight year old German aspired to become the new Yves Saint Laurent, the then leading designer who was first his great friend, then his competitor.

Thus, for the umpteenth time, the stories of great talents intersect. It is the common thread of the 2024 TV series. Which place in their time those who transformed the spirit of the time into collections. Episode after episode, the myth becomes human. Lives and relationships, insecurities and conflicts emerge. They are outlined by the spectacular language of sets and costumes. All we have to do is daydream.

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