Australian star Ben Mendelsohn’s on his latest role as fashion designer Christian Dior
In the new Apple TV+ show, Australian actor Ben Mendelsohn takes on his most surprising role yet: the creative force that was the designer Christian Dior.
Was it conceivable that so much beauty had arisen from the ashes of the Second World War?” So asks the author Justine Picardie in Miss Dior, her 2021 biography of Catherine Dior’s relationship with her brother Christian. How could a man who lived through the terror of occupied Paris, whose cherished French Resistance sister was imprisoned by the Nazis, produce a collection just two years after the armistice that would prove to be one of our most enduring testaments to femininity and grace? In The New Look, this month’s most anticipated new costume drama, the answer is: how could he have created anything else?
“He really wanted to soothe and bring back a world that was just obliterated,” explains Ben Mendelsohn. The Australian star of Animal Kingdom and Bloodline enunciates each syllable of that last word like gunfire. Mendelsohn is talking from his home in “La La”, as he calls it, in front of the kitchen where, five years ago, Bloodline and The New Look creator Todd Kessler made Mendelsohn a pizza and wondered, open-endedly, if the actor might be interested in portraying one of the most important fashion designers in history on screen.
“I said, ‘When do we do it?’” Mendelsohn says with a grin. He breezily admits he knew absolutely nothing whatsoever about the story of Christian Dior and his sister at the time. But the opportunity to spend eight months in Paris, steeped in everyday elegance and history, was enticing.
“You are the first person I am talking to about this,” Mendelsohn adds, delightedly. “You are the kick-off. And I couldn’t be happier that it’s Oz Vogue.”
As an actor, Mendelsohn is known for a certain wiriness and unpredictability; his best characters are all varying shades of mercurial rogues, from mega-franchises to indies and even his cameo as Jessa’s erratic father in Girls. Christian, by contrast, is sweetly reserved, a man possessing both deep emotions and ingenuity.
In one wrenching scene, Christian attempts to barter for his sister’s life with a bolt of coral silk. “He’s such a beautiful guy,” Mendelsohn muses. “He had to walk a very narrow path, and he walked it with real class and real dignity.”
The New Look follows two separate threads, during and just after World War II. The first involves Christian and Catherine, played by Game of Thrones’s Maisie Williams, for whom the war left devastating psychological wounds. The second focuses on “the mighty, mighty Coco”, as Mendelsohn describes Chanel.
In a few scenes, Christian and Coco’s storylines spectacularly collide. (When they do, it’s like watching the fashion equivalent of Godzilla meeting King Kong.) But mostly, The New Look keeps its titans apart, spinning two different tales about the twin forces of resilience and artistry in our darkest hours. “It’s about survival, really,” explains costume designer Karen Muller Serreau. “Those sort of circumstances really push you to bring beauty.
During production, Dior opened up their archives, inviting Serreau to look through what remains of the famous 1947 New Look collection. “There aren’t actually many dresses left of that time, but we managed to access all the swatches of fabrics and little drawings,” she says, to make identical colour matches for recreations. Of great importance was understanding the construction of Christian’s designs, particularly in pieces such as the iconic Bar Suit, with its nipped-in boning paired with the fluted majesty of the New Look skirts. “He started off as an architect,” Serreau notes, “so they were sort of built like architectural structures.” Serreau and her team worked on
a completely faithful recreation of a Bar Suit for the series; no concessions were made for modern comfort. “Our models suffered what they had to suffer in order to wear them!” Serreau adds. Chiefly, the weight of the skirt, fashioned from 11 metres of fabric and padded at the hips to create the kind of voluminous walk that can only be described as a sashay. “The layers, and the layers, and the layers, and the layers,” Mendelsohn mutters.
The actor chose to distance himself from current Dior – “I didn’t want to be tainted by what it is now,” – barring one visit to the flagship Avenue Montaigne boutique in Paris, housed in the location of the original atelier. “They were very, very kind to me. But you also don’t get to go in there and muck around,” Mendelsohn says. When it came to research, Serreau says that the actor was forever knocking about in her workshop, “to see why things are done the way they are and how you make things”. And, Mendelsohn adds, he went shopping. “I did buy some stuff. Full price,” he specifies. “No going asking for discounts. Beautiful stuff.” Such as? “You want me to do this?” (If you’re going to do it anywhere, it might as well be in Vogue, I reply.) “I bought a blue shearling coat. I bought his ring. I bought a couple of his bags. I bought a take on the classic Saddle bag, a male 1950s version. Just because I wanted to feel the thing.”
In The New Look, Mendelsohn is largely portraying the designer on the precipice of greatness, and as such, he tried to tap into the qualities of a younger Christian: his caring nature, but also his obsession with mysticism. “People think that people of great achievement are always that, but that’s never what life is,” Mendelsohn muses. “Life is just going along … Opportunities arise. I mean, look, I’m living proof of that in my own sort of way. I was doing nothin’ for yonks and then all of a sudden,” he grins, “fancypants.”
Mendelsohn is fantastic in the series. He might not be a perfect lookalike, but he has distilled something of the designer’s essence: his wit, intelligence and tenderness. “There were weeks where I think I did some of the hardest work I’ve ever done,” the actor admits. Such as in episode five, when Christian and scores of other hopeful Parisians venture to the train station, desperate to reunite with their interned loved ones. The scene begins with spirit – a rousing rendition of ‘La Marseillaise’ – that quickly curdles
into shock, as the survivors return carrying an unfathomable burden. “It was a horrible, horrible day,” he reflects, “interfused with periods of real togetherness.” But there is potential for joy in the series, too. Mendelsohn is thrilled to learn about the famous 1948 staging of the New Look collection for the first time outside of Paris in none other than Sydney. “How amazing!” he marvels.
It’s the kind of detail that would make the perfect opener for a second season. “Mate, listen. If there’s a way to come down and do something for it, I would love to. Nothing more important to me than trying to make [Australia] proud.”
The New Look is streaming on AppleTV+ from February 14.
This article appears in the February issue of Vogue Australia, on sale now.
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