The other star of the show, of course, is the costumes – which are within the realm of costume designer Karen Muller Serreau, who has worked on various projects like The Serpent Queen, Now You See Me and Stillwater.
UK-born but having lived extensively in Paris, she says: “Being English but with an almost native feel for France, my experience has given me a wider vision of form and style.”
Serreau says that all the costumes were made by her and her team, and that no vintage pieces were used. “I don’t always do period pieces recreating things absolutely or completely as they were, but creating things as they really were made,” she says.
“That’s what is important – how the Dior items were made and getting the beauty of that.”
“One of the things I wanted to get across was the importance of the fashion world,” says Serreau. “The series was about the surviving of them all, the fashion designers.
The first few episodes show the rumbling tension between Dior and Chanel, which Serreau wanted to capture through costume design.
“Between Chanel and Dior, I was going for the feminine side of Dior and a slightly more masculine side of Chanel,” she says. “It shows the difference of how they worked, one coming from a female, the other coming from a man.”
We took out most of the colour – there wasn’t much colour in general, it was a grey time, until we got to the liberation of Paris
The series also captures how tough times were for Parisian women, who still wanted to look stylish despite the tragedy of the war. “I really wanted to use ideas of reusing things,” says Serreau.
“Although they’re not things on the front line, I made hats from old bits and pieces of cloth to show that. We showed how women used old things to make new things.”
Snow wore Balenciaga for much of her life and was the one to coin the phrase “The New Look” to describe Dior’s 1947 collection, which helped put him on the fashion industry’s map. She also had her own distinct style.
“I looked at a lot of pictures of her, and knowing she was influenced by Balenciaga, I used that as inspiration,” says Serreau.
“She had an elegant but slightly eccentric look to her in all the documentation we found on her. That’s what I was trying to get across.”
But Serreau’s task was not limited to capturing the elite and their high-fashion looks – Picasso’s crisp white collared shirts, Chanel’s silk blouses – as she also had to dress the people around them as well.
“We took out most of the colour – there wasn’t much colour in general, it was a grey time, until we got to the liberation of Paris, where we injected red, white and blue everywhere, symbolising the French flag,” says Serreau.
As a result, she resorted to boxy, military designs for much of the 10-episode series until Dior unveils his 1947 collection, she recalls. “We were relieved when we got to The New Look at the end, and just went wild with fabric.”
