Summary
Ben Mendelsohn is masterful in “What A Difference” as a newly liberated Paris proves almost as dangerous and traumatic as it was when the Nazis were in charge.
The good news is that Paris has been liberated. The bad news is that the long specter of the Nazis still looms large over the French capital, jubilance and revelry rubbing shoulders with paranoia, prejudice, and depravity. Episode 4 of The New Look has a slightly different vibe than the first three, with Season 1 already having abandoned its wartime thriller accouterments — read that as if John Malkovich is saying it in his Aristocats accent — and become more explicitly about fashion. But it’s still very bleak and consistently riveting television.
The New Look Season 1 Episode 4 Recap
As usual, “What A Difference” is divided more or less equally between two concurrent storylines, one involving Coco Chanel and the other Christian Dior. At this point, though, it’s hard to argue that Christian has become the “hero”, so to speak, without Coco’s self-serving moral ambiguity. Then again, as this episode makes clear, their circumstances are very different.
Who is Arletty? Was she a real actress?
Let’s start with Coco. With the Nazis having left Paris she has now reopened her boutique to great success, hosting parties, pressing the flesh, and having a grand old time — though, crucially, not letting anyone know the details of how she regained financial control of the business or why the Baron was arrested for being a collaborator in Episode 3. Even Andre is none-the-wiser about that particular detail.
It quickly becomes clear, though, that Paris remains very unsafe for women, even successful ones. “What A Difference” introduces a new character to make this point, the real French actress Arletty. Despite having refused to star in any Nazi propaganda films, she nonetheless struck up an affair with a German officer — his name was Hans-Jürgen Soehring, though it isn’t mentioned in the show — which led to her famous quote “My heart is French but my ass is international,” and problematically a treason charge.
The Nazis have been replaced by the French Forces of the Interior, who have taken to marching shaven-headed women down the street with swastikas drawn on their heads, beating them in full view of the public for collaboration. And it’s only women, Coco notes at one point, with the many French policemen who also facilitated Nazi occupation having seemingly gotten away with it. Arletty is eventually arrested and given a traumatic public haircut, which is pretty essential to Coco’s arc since the FFI have their eyes on her as well.
Malcolm Muggeridge, MI6, and that interview with Coco Chanel
The FFI is working with British Intelligence, and while they know exactly what Coco was getting up to during the occupation, they don’t have any evidence to prove it and are scared of Churchill giving them grief for harassing his friends. About five minutes after they arrest Coco for collaboration they’re forced to release her because Winston is already on the phone.
A savvier approach is needed, then. To this end, they use Andre’s Cambridge friend Oscar Davies to introduce Coco to Malcolm Muggeridge, another real-life journalist and satirist who played spy for the British government during the war. The plan is to con Coco into a tell-all interview with Muggeridge that will inadvertently expose her as a collaborator. If the information is damning enough, it’ll be too embarrassing for Churchill to publicly defend her.
Coco, with pressure from Oscar and Andre, does agree to an interview with Muggeridge eventually. She even gets midway through it and is right on the cusp of revealing the name of her Nazi lover when Andre intervenes and drags her away. As it turns out, Oscar was a Nazi collaborator and is being pressured by MI6 to work for them in exchange for a clean slate. If he can’t incriminate Coco, though, he’s expected to incriminate Andre instead, and this is a bridge too far for him. He gets very drunk and confesses everything to Andre just in time for him to cut the interview short, and then he promptly kills himself.
With Paris hostile to her, Coco demands that she, Andre, and Gabrielle leave. The last we see of them they’re on the French-Swiss border.
Théâtre de la Mode
Meanwhile, Christian Dior is struggling to deal with Catherine’s fate. He makes the silly decision of hanging around Madame Delahaye, a clairvoyant, and it was established as early as Episode 1 that Christian is very much into such things. Delahaye tells him someone he loves is trapped — spooky! — and that she sees him holding an infant, which will pay off later.
In the meantime, Christian has work to attend to. To save French couture, Lucien has devised a masterplan — Théâtre de la Mode, or “Theatre of Fashion”, an exhibit to be held at the Louvre featuring all of Paris’s premiere fashion designers. However, since there is scarcely enough fabric remaining in Paris for even a single couture house to survive, the exhibition will be at 1/3 scale, with the various dresses and gowns all adorning tiny wire mannequins. Pierre Balmain is almost ludicrously opposed to this idea and wants to start his own house with Christian.
But Christian can’t concentrate. He’s especially thrown when Herve reminds him that he hasn’t told his father about Catherine’s fate, so eventually he plucks up the courage to do so. In a crushing scene, his father blames him entirely for Catherine’s capture — we don’t see her at all in this episode, but rumors of Nazi “Death Marches” are commonplace as the Allies close in on Germany — and suggests his creativity is responsible for him not being a real man or competent big brother.
Needless to say, this doesn’t make Christian keen to design dresses. He tells Lucien he quits and resolves to leave Paris entirely.
How does The New Look Season 1 Episode 4 end?
Of course, we’ve all heard of Christian Dior, so this obviously doesn’t happen. While Christian is plucking up the courage to depart, he happens to spot a woman abandoning a baby outside a nearby church. Before the nuns take it in, Christian picks it up and coos it, thus bringing Madame Delahaye’s prophecy to bear. Thrown, Christian visits her and asks if Catherine is alive. He’s reassured that she is, but that she will only be able to find him if he finds his life again. His work will be his salvation.
The episode ends with some information about Théâtre de la Mode, which drew 100,000 visitors and restored hope to France. Many designers participated, including Balenciaga, Lelong, Fath, Balmain — did he have a change of heart? — and Cartier. But two dresses received the most praise. Both of them were designed by Christian Dior.
What did you think of The New Look Season 1 Episode 4? Let us know in the comments.
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