From Balenciaga to Dior, TV series celebrate haute couture in 2024

By

Dominique Muret

Published
Dec 22, 2023

Two legendary fashion designers are in the spotlight on the small screen at the start of 2024. In January, the series Cristóbal Balenciaga, retracing the rise of the Spanish designer, will be released on the Disney+ streaming platform, while in February, The New Look, recounting the epic story of Christian Dior, will be broadcast on Apple TV+. Two mythical stories of French couture, which intertwine across the same century in Paris with the same protagonists. Like Coco Chanel, played by Anouk Grinberg in the first series, and Juliette Binoche in the second.

This essentially Spanish project looks at the life of Cristóbal Balenciaga, who arrived in Paris in 1937 fleeing the Spanish Civil War, where he left behind a brilliant career as a tailor and fashion designer in San Sebastian and Madrid. This original series, inspired by his life, is produced by the Spaniard Xavier Berzosa via the production companies Moriarti Produkzioak and Irusoin production, and created by Lourdes Iglesias and the three directors Aitor Arregi, Jon Garaño and Jose Mari Goenaga.
 
In the title role is Spanish actor Alberto San Juan, surrounded by other Spanish actors and an international cast. In addition to Anouk Grinberg, the cast includes French actors Patrice Thibaud as Christian Dior, Anne-Victoire Olivier as Audrey Hepburn, Nine d'Urso as model Colette and Canadian Gabrielle Lazure as Harper's Bazaar editor-in-chief Carmel Snow, played by Glenn Close in The New Look.

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Arriving in Paris in 1937, the Spanish couturier, renowned for his rigorous work on silhouettes and volumes, closed his house in 1968. Reopened in 1986, it was acquired by the Kering group in 2001 and is now run by Demna (real name Demna Gvasalia). The series plunges into the world of "this enigmatic man of extraordinary talent who defied the conventions of his time and revolutionised the world of fashion", as Disney+ sums up in a press release.
 
The film also recalls Christian Dior's arrival on the Paris fashion scene in the late 1940s. So The New Look comes at just the right time to shed a different light on this fervent couture era in the middle of the 20th century. This ten-part American series is produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Todd A. Kessler.
 

The story follows the career of the iconic French couturier, from his beginnings during the Occupation to the post-war period and the genesis of his famous "New Look", while also evoking his rivalry with Coco Chanel. Christian Dior, whose house has been relaunched by LVMH, is played by Australian Ben Mendelsohn, best known for starring in the crime drama Animal Kingdom.
 
As in the series about Balenciaga, we meet the protagonists of the period, including fashion designers Lucien Lelong played by John Malkovich, Pierre Balmain by Thomas Poitevin... and Cristóbal Balenciaga by Nuno Lopes, while British actress Maisie Williams plays the designer's sister, Catherine Dior.

It's an intense way to relive an exciting and influential period in French fashion, while we await the sequel, The Kaiser, about Karl Lagerfeld, due to be released next year on Disney+.