The New Look's costume designer Karen Muller Serreau has revealed the "extremely emotional" scene that brought everyone to tears on the set of Apple TV's new biographical drama about the life of fashion icon, Christian Dior.
The series follows the rise of the French designer and his rivalry with Coco Chanel as they launched modern fashion amid the horrors of World War II.
During an exclusive chat with HELLO!, Karen revealed that those on set became emotional during the filming of two significant scenes in the series: Dior's first fashion show in 1947, and one of his last in 1956.
"One of the first days of filming, we filmed the 1956 fashion show. All of us, with Dior, had tears in our eyes," said Karen, who has previously worked on the sets of The Serpent Queen, and the 2021 thriller starring Matt Damon, Stillwater.
© Apple TV+"It was so emotional to watch because you really got the atmosphere of what it must have been like at the fashion show."
Towards the end of the shoot, Karen was joined by representatives from Dior Heritage to watch the filming of the 1947 fashion shoot – which the designer says was the most rewarding moment of working on the show.
"There's just something incredibly emotional about it," she said. "We felt like we were really living something that had happened before. We'd been through all these dark periods in the film where all the clothes were kind of worn out, dark and sad-looking. Then suddenly we got to that point of filming and it was just magic."
© Apple TV+It was also an emotional moment for Maisie Williams, who plays Catherine Dior in the series. "It was the first time we see Maisie dressed in a suit and I know she felt the same sorts of feelings as well," said Karen. "She was sitting there, watching this show happen in front of her eyes."
Karen worked closely with Hélène Starkman, the longtime cultural projects manager at Christian Dior Couture, to recreate Dior's fashion looks, including one of his most iconic designs 'The Bar Suit', which the American press immediately dubbed the 'New Look' when it first appeared in his spring/summer collection of 1947.
© Apple TV+On how she approached the mammoth task of replicating Dior's designs, Karen revealed that she had access to historical archives. "I started by reading the scripts, and then documenting them with images to get an idea of the atmosphere before building storyboards around that," she explained. "We started off by looking at what there was in the archives, plus sketches and anything from the press at that time. Once we got that, we chose the dresses."
The New Look is available to stream on Apple TV+.
