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VF<\/strong> Dior comes off as the hero of the series, while Chanel is the villain, even if, as you say, she has a feminist bent, especially when she is confronting the Wertheimers, her backers, about getting a more even split of the proceeds. They ask her how she could use their Jewishness against them, and she asks them if they have ever considered what it is to be a single woman running her own business (a complicated equivalency).<\/p>\nBut I did find it notable that the current-day Dior brand supported the series by allowing the filmmakers into their archive so they could see the actual dresses, while Chanel-the-brand was not involved. That said, I was struck by how little actual fashion there was in the series. I wish there had been more of it.<\/p>\n
SB<\/strong> Yes! That one brief scene in the Dior atelier dressing room as the models were getting ready for his first show \u2014 that energy and glamour and clamor of them applying their own makeup \u2014 I wanted more of it.<\/p>\nVF<\/strong> One of the issues the series raises is the perennial: Can you separate the artist from their art? Does it matter if Chanel was a terrible person or Dior was superstitious to an almost debilitating extreme, if what they made changed how we all dress? And yet, because we saw so little of the fashion, the justification for focusing on the people behind the brands seemed less convincing. The only real Chanel clothing we got to see was what Chanel herself was wearing: the pearls, the easy jackets and cocktail dresses. And yet, she was as important a figure when it comes to what we wear as Dior.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
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At the same time, when I spoke to the creator, Todd A. Kessler (also the director, and a writer and exec producer), he told me he conceived of this series in the model of \u201cThe Sopranos,\u201d which he also worked on \u2014 as a human story that just happened to be set in a world we all love to imagine.<\/p>\n
SB<\/strong> That\u2019s interesting. To that end, one of my favorite elements of the show (and I have no idea if it is accurate) was the close relationships between Pierre Balmain, Crist\u00f3bal Balenciaga and Christian Dior. Their conversations, friendship and rivalry was a treat to see reenacted.<\/p>\nVF<\/strong> And Pierre Cardin! The young Cardin, who got a job at the Dior house, was one of the most engaging, exuberant characters to me. I did think it was funny to see the egotistic Balmain, the confident Balenciaga. Though I missed the other women who were working at the time, like Elsa Schiaparelli and Jeanne Lanvin. I can imagine they might have had a lot of fun with Schiaparelli.<\/p>\nSB <\/strong>Yes! So much fun. Did you like Glenn Close as the Harper\u2019s Bazaar editor Carmel Snow?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
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VF<\/strong> It was a good reminder of a time when magazine editors could actually make or break a designer. It is probably unimaginable to many today, but she had been sent to Paris to crown the Next Big Thing, and so she did.<\/p>\nSB<\/strong> I loved the scenes between Mrs. Snow and Mlle. Chanel, who looked so much more modern and at ease in her own clothes than Mrs. Snow looked. It made me reconsider Chanel as a casual brand. I know that the brand was born of Chanel\u2019s wanting more ease and movement and pockets and whatnot, but seeing the elegant costumes on Juliette Binoche gave me a new appreciation for that idea. So I guess, to answer your first question: Yes, it humanized the brands for me.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n