In Episode 4 of Apple TV+’s The New Look, Lucien Lelong (played by John Malkovich), head of the eponymous couture house that ruled Parisian fashion for decades, presents one of his staff designers, Christian Dior (Ben Mendelsohn), with a doll constructed of bent wire.
“No, it’s not a joke,” Lelong asserts. “It’s the future of French fashion.”
It was the fall of 1944, and the previous June, Paris had been liberated from nearly four years of Nazi occupation. Morale was wobbly, and the city was assembling itself anew while the war continued on. For the Parisian fashion industry—which, pre-war, had been the final word in fashion—rehabilitation was dire. As depicted in The New Look, couturiers had one of two choices: designing for the wives or girlfriends of Nazis (broadly, the only couture patrons permitted at the time), or close shop altogether. Export of any kind—clothing, sketches, or even sartorial ideas—was totally restricted. Parisian fashion existed in a Nazi-sealed vacuum.
With the liberation, however, came a feverish creative release. Couturiers regained their ability to craft, design, and sell freely and, in doing so, disseminate their ideas to department stores and wardrobes across the world. And, to everyone’s surprise and delight, some of the first bodies to showcase those post-occupation designs were 27-inch-tall dolls, presented as part of a traveling exhibition dubbed the “Théâtre de la Mode,” or Theater of Fashion.
On March 28, 1945, “Théâtre de la Mode” opened at the Louvre’s Marsan Pavilion. On the dolls were astoundingly intricate designs by 40 couturiers (Balenciaga, Schiaparelli, Paquin, Jean Patou, Hermès, Madame Grès, Nina Ricci, and Lucien Lelong, among them). A celebration of hope and beauty after a dismally dark period, “Théâtre de la Mode” exhibited figurines enjoying typical Parisian moments (a morning walk on the Champs-Élysées, an afternoon of shopping at the Palais-Royal) wearing extraordinary fashions. It was a love letter to Paris, from Paris.
Though miniature in scale, the dolls had an imposing impact: over its first two-month run, the show welcomed 100,000 visitors, raised over a million Francs, and went on to travel the world. But, more significantly, the dolls presented actual renditions of couture—not twee dolly clothes, but grand ball gowns, skirt suits, and day dresses presenting a vision of how the post-war woman would dress. And, as fashion historians are wont to point out, one of the ensembles, a two-piece set contributed by the house of Lelong and likely designed by Christian Dior, looks remarkably like the Bar Suit, which would arrive a couple of years later and change the course of fashion history.
“The French were very smart about this,” says Patricia Mears, deputy director at the Museum at FIT, who has written extensively on the era. “It was a real problem, trying to get materials, so what is one sort of economical way to create a whole array of fashions without that much material being needed? Dolls.”
It all started when Raoul Dautry, France’s Minister of Reconstruction and Urban Development, asked Robert Ricci (son of designer Nina Ricci) to drum up a fundraising idea for the war efforts. Ricci was involved in the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture and asked its then president, Lelong, what could be done. Together, they conceived of the “Théâtre de la Mode.”
Their idea had historical precedent: During the 18th and 19th centuries, fashion houses used dolls to show their designs to clients unable to visit ateliers in person. Even in miniature, three-dimensional drapes, silhouettes, and finishes were more evocative of the final product than simple sketches and swatches.
So, Lelong and Ricci called upon fellow members of the Syndicale—as well as the likes of artist Jean Cocteau, illustrator Christian Bérard, and the Catalan sculptor Joan Rebull (who crafted the dolls’ plaster faces)—to contribute the imaginative sets. Rallying together to produce the “Théâtre de la Mode” brought purpose and optimism to Parisian creatives who were still in dire straits.
Of the artisanship on display, Lelong himself said that the show was “not intended to represent luxury or lavish use of materials; it is instead a proof of ingenuity and good taste.”
Following the first run of “Théâtre de la Mode,” which stayed open for a month longer than planned due to its popularity, parts of the show traveled to Barcelona, London, Leeds, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Vienna, New York, and San Francisco, and eventually to Washington s Maryhill Museum of Art. In New York, it received a glitzy reception; the opening, which featured new dolls and sets, was described in the June 1946 issue of Vogue as a “brilliant, bilingual crush.” “The entire fashion industry of France, her great artists and designers, worked it out to raise money for the rehabilitation of shattered villages.”
“When you say dolls, people are somewhat dismissive,” says Mears, “until you see them and you realize that they were absolute magic. Everyone really put so much effort into the show—between the artisans, the designers, and the artists who all collaborated. It was almost as if you were stepping into a fairytale. You were stepping into a movie—it was transportive.” Though The New Look doesn’t present the finished exhibition in the series, Episode 4 ends with a scene showing Dior at the Lelong atelier, finetuning his contribution to the “Théâtre de la Mode.”
Between 1989 to 1990, the dolls living at Washington’s Maryhill Museum of Art were restored at Paris’ the Musée de la Mode et du Textile then returned to Maryhill, where they’re under the care of curator Steven L. Grafe. They capture a moment in time and represent the unending creativity and resilience of the French fashion industry. And as The New Look suggests, without the “Théâtre de la Mode,” we may never have seen the New Look.
