The Collection mulls the mystique of chic
Miniseries evokes mystery, elegance from postwar era
French women don’t get fat. According to common belief, they also don’t eat tofu, wear sneakers or dribble Chardonnay down their chins. What they do, instead, is look witheringly chic.
And while there might be some Paleolithic paintings somewhere of a Franco-cavelady with her animal pelts draped just so, one of the most groundbreaking expressions of French fashion is Christian Dior’s New Look esthetic of 1947.
The Collection, a miniseries airing Sundays under PBS’s Masterpiece banner, celebrates that era. With the Second World War a rapidly shrinking reflection in the country’s collective rear-view mirror, Paris is recovering from Nazi occupation and desperate to regain its status as the fashion capital of the world.
Enter the fictional Sabine family. Businessman Paul (Richard Coyle), is pushing his brilliant yet troubled brother Claude (Tom Riley), to turn out designs that turn heads. His American wife Helen (Mamie Gummer), and scheming mother Yvette (Frances de la Tour), also figure in his orbit.
As they do in these types of sagas, the characters swirl in secrets and drama — but in The Collection they’re impeccably dressed while doing it. Costume designer Chattoune made sure of it. She tapped into the real-life fashion of the time for inspiration, logging hours at the fashion history museum Palais Galliera, but the goal was to evoke the era instead of outright copying it.
“First of all, we had to get rid of the idea of Dior, because of course New Look is attached to Dior. You know how fashion goes — you always have someone who does it better than the others or has stronger ideas. Basically the mood of it, the spirit of it, goes through all the designers at the same time. But I have to say Dior was definitely the best.”
A signature feature of the New Look era was fabric, and lots of it — in fact, some of Dior’s gowns demanded up to 40 metres worth. (Meanwhile, in postwar England, it was illegal to use more than three metres of fabric for a skirt.) Shoulders were girlish and rounded, skirts billowed insolently and waists seemed no wider than a croissant.
“We were just finishing the war and the restrictions of the war, especially on fabric. So because it’s Paris and fashion, they really wanted to be crazy about the amount of fabric,” says Chattoune, noting that designer Cristóbal Balenciaga was breaking ground with clean, sculptural lines in his own right.
“During the war, the women were dressed a bit manly. They had the trousers, the big broad shoulders, and designers wanted to get rid of all that. They wanted to go back to femininity.”
Over the eight-part miniseries, Chattoune and partner Fabien Esnard-Lascombe were pressed to create that feel of luxury with a budget decidedly less haute couture and more prêt-à-porter. To wit, most costumes for the extras were rented.
“The show, the time, the money — the whole thing makes it impossible to create clothing for everybody. But we did make for Helen two dresses. We custom-made all of Claude’s suits and we custom-made of course all the Claude designs. We custom-made about 40 or 50 pieces, which is a lot,” says Chattoune.
“I cannot say that we did it like haute couture, but really everything is handmade and very refined. We always know the best place to get the best fabric at the cheapest price. And I have to say, I have an amazing cutter and tailor.”
Of all the looks in The Collection — Paul’s tailored power suits, Claude’s casual motorcycle gear, the models’ show-stopping gowns — Chattoune says few can translate the exactly same way today. It’s fashion fact.
“Not all of the pieces are timeless, to be honest. But every period has its timeless pieces,” she says, adding that fashion’s recent infatuation with the 1980s brazenly brought in elements from the 1940s.
“Whenever something is well cut and refined and beautiful, it goes over all periods. When it’s a good one, it’s a good one forever.”