Fashionable lives reimagined for the small screen
The industry’s most influential figures - Karl Lagerfeld, Cristóbal Balenciaga, Coco Chanel and Christian Dior included - are having their tales told on TV, as the companies behind these brands look to Hollywood to grow their reach.
Prestige television has been the entertainment of choice for years now. Think Succession, Mad Men, The Crown.
Gripping drama, pitch-perfect writing and exquisite costumes. Remember “stealth wealth”? It wasn’t just a runway trend; it reached the masses courtesy of Shiv Roy’s tailored, Ralph Lauren-laden wardrobe boasting 50 shades of grey, white and beige. This year’s “mob wife” aesthetic obsession came about after Gen Z was introduced to Carmela Soprano on TikTok.
Fashion has always had main character energy, but it has now finally become the star. If life were a film we’d be watching the glamorous makeover scene right about now. Fashion – not just the clothing – but the egos, the backstories and the history of some of the industry’s biggest names and brands are the new stars of a slew of television series and film projects coming to our screens both big and small.
Gone are the days of fashion being the butt of the joke, as we saw in Zoolander, the Ed Hardy-clad character of Stefon (Bill Hader) on Saturday Night Live and the often parodied “Hi FashionTV!” air kisses from the now defunct channel dedicated to close-ups of models backstage.
This latest wave of productions heralds a new era for fashion and also for entertainment. One where fashion is the focus, not just playing (an albeit important) supporting role. As author and fashion historian Justine Picardie sums up, this kind of fashion television is a departure from “shiny Saturday night TV” such as America’s Next Top Model (and its international spin-offs) and Project Runway.
Fashion on the small screen has more often than not been of the reality variety. Series that aren’t so much about fashion as getting dressed. These new productions are “giving us beauty and magic in a different way”, says Picardie, and also teaching us a few things along the way across a variety of genres.
Dramas such as Apple TV’s The New Look are critically acclaimed not only for Australian actor Ben Mendelsohn’s performance as Christian Dior, but also for its warts and all deep dive into the early years of the designer and Coco Chanel’s careers during the Nazi occupation of Paris.
Dior and Chanel went on to revolutionise fashion, and the way women dressed, especially in Dior’s case after the Franco-German Armistice, but this series offers a nuanced take. We see Dior’s sister, Catherine, and her acts of resistance in the lead up to her arrest and subsequent torture in a concentration camp in 1944 play out as Coco Chanel (Juliette Binoche) spends cocktail hours with the SS and Dior designs ballgowns for their wives.
Closer to home, the ABC will soon debut its TV spin-off of the 2018 Bruce Beresford-directed film adaptation of Madeleine St John’s 1993 novel Ladies in Black.
The six-part series, directed by Gracie Otto of Heartbreak High fame, takes place six months after the film ends in Sydney during the 1960s and is loosely based on the shop floor of David Jones. As well as exploring this transformational time for Australian women, it also delves into the world of university students and the social change they drove during the same period.
So why is it that you can’t swing a tuxedo jacket in 2024 without hitting a new fashion miniseries? Well, in some instances, the inspiration is not just creative.
Forget the “lipstick index”, Estée Lauder heir Leonard Lauder’s term to explain the correlation between increased consumer spending on small luxuries such as cosmetics during economic downturns. We’ve now entered the era of the meta commercial. Catwalks, campaigns and Instagram content have never been more important to fashion houses, and so now are films and television series to broaden brand awareness and bring new audiences to streaming services.
Fashion conglomerates are eyeing off Hollywood as their next area of investment. Last year Groupe Artémis, the family office of Kering owner François-Henri Pinault, bought a majority stake in the Creative Artists Agency, which represents the likes of Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, Reese Witherspoon, Challengers star Zendaya and Pinault’s wife, House of Gucci actor Salma Hayek.
Brands are increasingly looking to lock in “relationships” with the next big name, be it online, on screens and, as we’ve seen during the recent college basketball finals in the US, on the court. Nike was quick to sign emerging star Caitlin Clark while fellow player Angel Reese chose US Vogue to announce her tilt at the WNBA draft.
“There’s no separation between fashion and entertainment anymore,” says luxury consultant Robert Burke. Organisations and companies such as Pinault’s Artémis taking a stake in CAA is, he says, a “natural, if unprecedented evolution”.
LVMH – owner of brands including Loewe, Tiffany & Co., Bulgari, Fendi, Givenchy, Dom Perignon, Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty and Louis Vuitton – has also entered the entertainment arena. Earlier this year LVMH created a new division as a way to “explore opportunities” for its stable of 75 storeyed brands. The Business of Fashion said 22 Montaigne Entertainment, is another way the fashion world is “adjusting to a shifting media landscape that has … also opened up opportunities to tell niche stories of streaming platforms”.
“At LVMH, we view each maison as a house of stories, a distinct creator of culture,” said LVMH North America chairman Anish Melwani of the launch. “We embrace the belief that these narratives are meant to be experienced rather than simply told, and our goal is to further leverage premium entertainment as a means to share the richness of these tales with our customers.”
Saint Laurent is also getting in on the act. The brand’s entertainment subsidiary launched last year and, while not specifically fashion focused, it has three films in the official selection for this month’s Cannes Film Festival.
However, even before these companies can start greenlighting projects or helping to launch films and television shows in conjunction with collections, wine vintages and eyeshadow palettes, fashion is already the major trend on our screens this winter.
Look at AppleTV’s Palm Royale, which is set in Palm Beach in 1969. Kristen Wiig’s series is a sun-drenched and hilarious homage to Slim Aarons (and culottes).
The new television iteration of Mr & Mrs Smith boasts Donald Glover (also known as singer Childish Gambino) in Maison Margiela tanks and his on-screen “wife” Maya Erskine draped in silk shirts by The Row. These are stylish details not lost on eagle-eyed fashion fans and also not surprising considering that the costume designer for this Prime Video series is former US GQ fashion director of 20 years, Madeline Weeks.
Perhaps one of the most highly anticipated releases is a retrospective take of former Chanel and Fendi creative director Karl Lagerfeld. Following the critical success of Cristóbal Balenciaga earlier this year – the first of Disney+’s biographical costume dramas – comes the platform’s origin story of one of fashion, and the wider cultural realm’s, most fascinating figures.
The series, which debuts on Disney+ next month, charts Lagerfeld’s rise to fame in the 1970s, his rivalry with Yves Saint Laurent and his love affair with his “dandy muse” Jacques de Bascher.
Judging by the images released, Becoming Karl Lagerfeld is set to be as sumptuous as Chanel bouclé and features some 3000 costumes, all drawn from the archives of the houses helmed by Lagerfeld. It’s also based on a number of biographies published about “the man no one really knew”, star Daniel Brühl tells WISH.
Brühl researched the role by reading extensively about Lagerfeld and speaking with the designer’s friendship circle. He even admits to attending Chanel fittings with celebrities for last year’s Met Gala dressed in costume.
Becoming Karl Lagerfeld’s costume designer Pascaline Chavanne also put in some serious hours, seeking answers in the ateliers presided over by the designer for decades. “While working Lagerfeld used to say, ‘Appetite comes from eating, ideas from working’,” she says.
Chavanne is not surprised to see fashion become a cinematic trend in 2024. “We’re living in a crucial moment in the emancipation of women and the question of gender. Fashion is as much part of this as it reflects the evolution of mentalities. Telling the story of fashion also means telling the story of the emancipation of women,” she shares with WISH.
“It’s a way of echoing what’s happening right now, the liberation of speech. Fashion is a social phenomenon that concerns us all, even if we’re not always aware of it.”
This story is from the May issue of WISH.
