Closer to its conclusion, the series The New Look took some more historical liberties with the tragic character Vera Nina Arkwright Lombardi, introduced as “Elsa” Lombardi, whose sad death marked an episode with darker colors.

Coco Chanel’s (Juliette Binoche) great friend and complex accomplice gained a leading role thanks to the undeniable charisma of actress Emily Mortimer. The series stayed close to the truth when it showed the involvement of Elsa, Chanel’s longtime friend, in the botched Operation ModelHut mission in Madrid, where they tried to contact Winston Churchill. However, the post-war, with the two living together in Lausanne is a creative part of the showrunners: the real Elsa returned to Rome, thanks to the help of Chanel and Churchill. It was in the Roman capital that she died, suspiciously, in 1947. The New Look uses her anguish to once again reinforce the parallel between the designer and Christian Dior (Ben Mendesholn), another who witnessed the trauma of survivors, like her sister, Catherine (Maisie Williams).

Parallels: the style of The New Look

The Apple TV Plus series is 5% about Fashion and 95% about survival, effectively leaving us with almost nothing about how Dior revolutionized the way women dressed after World War II. From the beginning, it placed Chanel and Dior as antagonists, at least on her side, and went back in time to show the horrors of the War and how they both dealt with the same dilemmas in different ways.

Downplaying the Frenchwoman’s involvement with the Nazis as if it had been something “accidental” and motivated to save her nephew from execution, Chanel’s anti-Semitism appears in the story, equally inserted as a reaction to commercial disputes. Binoche is wonderful in the role and The New Look works like two series in one because there is nothing that brings Dior closer to Chanel, just her envy when he achieves idolatry similar to hers. In the series, she is the antagonist.

Dior also faced the dilemma of having continued working during the War, to support his sister who was in the Resistance, and then to help her when she returned from the Concentration Camp. In Peace, the psychological turmoil of guilt and trauma parades in plots that are not always well-stitched.

The emotional struggle

Catherine’s importance in Dior’s entire creation process is not clear in The New Look. Although Maisie Williams conveys Catherine’s tragic traits well, there is not a strong bond between siblings so often mentioned in the designer’s biographies. He is demanding, he is dedicated only to be more demanded and criticized by his family.

But it is Dior’s relationship with Catherine that is used to create the parallel with Chanel. The scars of War seem even more painful when people had to navigate the emotional ruins left by the Germans. The past torments Catherine as well as Elsa and Chanel, in a way that they cannot express in words. Catherine, we discover, condemns herself for having had a cowardly attitude of survival when another young woman is punished for her actions in prison. Chanel feels guilty for having used the flighty and fragile Elsa.

The truth about Elsa Lombardi’s death is that it was always considered “mysterious” and occurred in Rome, not Switzerland, with Chanel. The suspicions are that she was in retaliation for having been a double agent helping the British. What is clear is that she never went beyond an appendage in Chanel’s biography, even though she was her muse for creating the “English style” of trousers and blazers, was the person who introduced the French woman to Chanel and, yes, later on being the person who reported her for spying in Madrid.

Having been placed in a forced coexistence of friendship/blackmail, having been a victim of the Nazis, and having found herself in a place of life where she was rejected by everything and everyone, she highlighted once again the sad and gray side of survival. Her death in the dark, in loneliness, and in rejection humanized Chanel, once again indirectly implicated in the tragedy. Congratulations to Emily Mortimer. Alongside Juliette Binoche, the two hijacked the series and she will be greatly missed.

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