During the occupation, Dior continues working for Lucien Lelong's fashion house, designing clothes for Nazi wives and girlfriends despite his distaste for the work. Dior finances his sister Catherine's work with the French Resistance, and is distraught when she is arrested by Nazis. Dior is unable to find her before the Allies arrive, and he turns to a mystic, Delahaye, who tells him that Catherine will return safely. Dior's belief is seemingly vindicated when Catherine does return alive.
Chanel, who is a well-established designer, closed her fashion house during the war to avoid designing for Nazis, but her celebrity status brings her into contact with them, and she uses these connections to have her nephew Andre released from capture. Chanel takes Hans von Dincklage, a Nazi spy, as a lover and is pressured to participate in a failed plot to send secret communication to Winston Churchill. After the liberation, Chanel is targeted by MI6 who want to have her exposed as a Nazi collaborator, and she flees to Switzerland.
Dior obtains financing from Marcel Boussac to open his own fashion house. Raymonde Zehnacker leaves Lelong to join Dior as partner and run the business, as Dior is more interested in the creative aspects of the work. Dior's work distances him from Catherine, who leaves Paris for their hometown of Callian to recover from the trauma of her imprisonment. In order to meet the launch deadline for the season, Dior permits Zehnacker to poach seamstresses from other fashion houses; Pierre Balmain protests and threatens to have Dior removed from the Couture Council, but Lelong decides not to sanction Dior.
In exile, Chanel struggles for money. She threatens legal action against her partners, the Wertheimers, over profits and control of the Chanel brand, despite her lawyer's advice that such action will bring to light Chanel's business with the Nazis. Chanel successfully negotiates new terms with the Wertheimers, but von Dincklage arranges for Elsa, Chanel's best friend, to die, and destroys Chanel's relationship with Andre by revealing her Nazi connections to him. Andre reports her to French police's Nazi Investigation Bureau, and she is arrested.
To Dior's surprise, Catherine attends the launch of his fashion line and learns that his perfume is named after her. Carmel Snow, editor-in-chief at Harper's Bazaar, also attends the launch in the hopes of finding a French designer to highlight. At the very end of the fashion show, Dior sends out the model wearing the outfit that defines his fashion line as the "New Look".
In November 2023, it was announced that Jack Antonoff would produce the soundtrack for The New Look, which consists of covers of popular songs from the early and mid-20th century.[13] Scheduled to be released on April 3, 2024, the soundtrack album for the first season comprises 10 covers and will be the first release by Antonoff's Shadow of the City record label, under Dirty Hit.[14]Florence and the Machine's cover of "The White Cliffs of Dover" was released as the first single on January 31, 2024.[15][16] The second single, a cover of "Now Is the Hour" by the 1975 was released on February 7, 2024.[17][18]
The New Look (Apple TV+ Original Series Soundtrack) track listing[15][19]
The series was released with the first three episodes on February 14, 2024, followed by one episode every Wednesday through April 3.[1]
Reception
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the series holds an approval rating of 59% based on 54 reviews, with an average rating of 6.5/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "The New Look benefits from impressive production values and a talented cast, even if they're often let down by a somewhat scattered story."[20] On Metacritic, the series holds a weighted average score of 62 out of 100, based on 23 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[21] Anita Singh of the Telegraph awarded the series three stars out of five, praising the show’s “sumptious” look but criticizing the decision to shoot in English.[22]