Is The New Look based on a true story?

Led by Ben Mendelsohn (Secret Invasion) as Dior, the series explores how the designer and his peers in the industry had to navigate the events of the Second World War and continue their endeavours to launch modern fashion.

Mendelsohn is joined in the cast by Juliette Binoche as Coco Chanel, Maisie Williams as Catherine Dior and John Malkovich as Lucien Lelong, plus many more familiar faces.

The drama tells the story against the backdrop of Nazi-occupied Paris, with the series having been shot exclusively in the French capital.

But is The New Look based on a true story? Watch our video (above) and read on to find out.

Is The New Look based on a true story?

The 10-episode series is inspired by true events, yes.

Like with any historical drama, there are fictionalised accounts and scenes made for The New Look, but the history on which the story of the series is based is very much real.

Christian Dior was a well-known French fashion designer who died in 1957, but the brand still lives on and is beloved to this day, as are the designers who he worked with during the Second World War.

For example, Balmain retains its high fashion status now, but as we see in the series, both Dior and Pierre Balmain worked with French couturier Lucien Lelong to revive Parisian fashion during the war.

Dior rose to prominence in the fashion world after being discovered by Robert Piguet, the same Paris-based designer who is known for training Dior and Hubert de Givenchy.

Now known as a brand for its fragrances, Piguet himself gave Dior the opportunity to design for three collections - but Dior eventually had to leave his work for Piguet when he was drafted for military service.

After leaving the army in 1942, Dior then joined Lelong's fashion house and became a primary designer alongside Balmain.

Like many other fashion houses during the time period, Dior had to design dresses for the wives of Nazi officers and French collaborators.

Depicted in the series, we see that Dior is uncomfortable with the task, but like many designers at the time - including Nina Ricci and Jeanne Lanvin - it was what was expected of Paris-based designers during the Nazi occupation in the French capital.

Speaking to British Vogue, The New Look director Todd A Kessler said: "The horrors of World War II brought humanity to its knees, and the unknown [designer] Christian Dior, a survivor of the four-year-long Nazi occupation of Paris, helped revive [the city’s] spirit and the desire to live again through his creations."

In 1946, Dior founded his own fashion house, and his reputation reached new heights when he debuted his first collection in 1947 - when he introduced the famed 'New Look'.

The style of the garments was to celebrate opulence, femininity and luxury after seeing that fashion had taken a hit due to the war and its militarisation of style.

In his autobiography, Dior said: "In December 1946, as a result of the war and uniforms, women still looked and dressed like Amazons.

"But I designed clothes for flower-like women, with rounded shoulders, full feminine busts, and hand-spun waists above enormous spreading skirts."

The Bar Suit (an example of which can be seen above) became the most talked-about outfit in the collection, consisting of a black skirt and beige suit jacket with a cinched in waistline and buttons.

The suit itself was designed by Pierre Cardin, who was Dior's head of tailoring.

With Dior's debut collection, 'The New Look' was born, revolutionising French fashion and simultaneously reestablishing Paris as the capital of the fashion world once again.

Each collection featured a new 'line', and his fashion continued to bring confidence to women.

What happened to Catherine Dior?

As depicted in the first batch of episodes of The New Look, Christian's sister Catherine Dior was a member of the French Resistance during the Second World War, and joined a covert network called F2 in 1941, gathering intelligence for the Allies.

Catherine used her brother's Parisian apartment as a base for Resistance meetings, but was arrested and tortured by the Gestapo in 1944, along with 26 other members of the group.

Despite Christian trying to use his contacts to secure her release, Catherine was sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp.

She was moved to different concentration camps during her capture, but was liberated by Soviet soldiers and returned to Paris nearly a year after her capture in 1945.

It has been said that due to her emaciated appearance, Christian didn't even recognise his sister upon her return.

Speaking about the process of depicting Catherine's story, actress Maisie Williams told Harper's Bazaar: "It was very relentless, the process of doing take after take, it really breaks down your character in a way.

"It’s not for everyone, but for me, I like to get lost in a role, and keep on pushing until we complete a scene."

Catherine rebuilt her life alongside her brother, starting a flower business and growing roses for her brother's perfumes in Provence until her death in 2008.

Williams also told Harper's Bazaar: "Every day of filming was a reminder that we were portraying a story of the horrors that humans are capable of inflicting on one another, but also the magic and the hope and the love... Ultimately, we wanted to make a show that was uplifting."

Did Coco Chanel collaborate with Nazi-German occupiers in Paris?

Coco Chanel's story is also a major focus of The New Look, with the infamous designer portrayed by Juliette Binoche.

The series opens in 1955, with Chanel announcing her comeback collection and criticising Dior's career.

In a confronting scene in which Dior is presenting his garments and taking questions from the audience, he is asked whether he carried on designing and making dresses for the wives of Nazis while Chanel closed her atelier.

In the first episodes of the series, we see how she is wooed by a mysterious man named Spatz (Claes Bang), likely based on the real-life figure of German aristocrat Baron Hans Günther Von Dincklage, with whom Chanel had a romantic relationship.

Dincklage was an officer in Abwehr, the German military intelligence, and their relationship allowed Chanel to move into the Hotel Ritz, which was a frequent meeting point for German high society and officers at the time.

Her relationship with Dincklage also allowed her to seek the release of her nephew André Palasse, who was imprisoned in a German stalag in 1940.

But in order to free her nephew, Dincklage introduced Chanel to prominent Abwehr agent Baron Louis de Vaufreland. Vaufreland promised to free her nephew if she aided in helping them.

In 1941, Chanel was registered under the pseudonym of Westminster, as Agent F-7124. The documents linking Chanel to German intelligence services were first unearthed by her biographer Hal Vaughan, who also revealed Chanel's anti-Semitic views and later wrote about them for his book Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel's Secret War.

Vaughn establishes that Chanel worked for General Walter Schellenberg and, as we see in episode 2, was told to carry out a mission involving using her personal connection to Winston Churchill to try and seek an end to the war.

Known as Operation Modellhut, in 1943 Chanel used her and Churchill's mutual connection, Vera Lombardi, who unknowingly delivered a letter to Churchill from Chanel. On arrival to Madrid to deliver the letter, the mission failed when Lombardi denounced Chanel and her associates as German spies.

Chanel was never sentenced or imprisoned for her work but had a reputation as a collaborator, one that she eventually managed to shake in order to become the well-known fashion icon we still know about today.

She made her return to the fashion world in 1954 and eventually died in the Hotel Ritz in 1971, aged 87.

More recently, evidence of Chanel's work with the French Resistance was brought to light, when documents were unearthed as part of the V&A's exhibition about the designer in 2023.

The previously unseen documents went on display and showed the name "Gabrielle AKA Coco Chanel" on a list of 400,000 people whose part in the resistance is backed up by official records.

Speaking to The Guardian, curator Oriole Cullen said: "We have verification from the French government, including a document from 1957, which confirms her active participation in the resistance.

"The new evidence doesn’t exonerate her. It only makes the picture more complicated. All we can say is that she was involved with both sides."

The New Look is available to stream on Apple TV+, with episodes dropping weekly. Sign up to Apple TV+ now.

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