Coco Chanel and Christian Dior have been rival couture designers within the Fifties. But throughout World War II, they discovered themselves in the identical tragic scenario: Both had members of the family imprisoned by the Nazis and have been pulling each form of string to get them again. That’s the premise of The New Look, out on Apple TV+ on Feb. 14, starring Juliette Binoche as Chanel and Ben Mendelsohn as Dior. Over 10 episodes, The New Look exhibits them combating to avoid wasting their family members after which combating to avoid wasting their very own couture homes within the post-war interval.

Here, TIME talked to biographers of Chanel and Dior about what the designers actually went by means of throughout World War II, what to make of Chanel’s affiliation with Nazi officers, and the little-known story of Dior’s resistance fighter sister Catherine, who was an inspiration for his legendary 1947 “New Look” assortment.

Chanel’s Nazi ties

As proven in The New Look, Chanel had a bed room on the Ritz, at a time when many rich people gave up their houses through the occupation and moved into accommodations to be extra value environment friendly. But Chanel biographers differ on to what extent the designer interacted with the Nazis after they occupied the constructing in 1940.

“Chanel definitely socialized with them,” says Lisa Chaney, creator of Coco Chanel: An Intimate Life. The New Look portrays Chanel hanging out with them at small gatherings on the property, which Chaney says matches what the designer would have carried out in actual life. But in line with Chaney, “There is no proof that she was in any way actually a Nazi by herself.”

On the opposite hand, Justine Picardie, creator of Coco Chanel: The Legend and The Life, says that Chanel was not socializing with the varied Nazis within the constructing, and that she solely talked to them when she wanted to get info on the whereabouts of her French soldier nephew André, who had been captured. The one Nazi she socialized with was Hans Gunther von Dincklage, a spy nicknamed Spatz, and he or she wasn’t going out in public with him.

The New Look is right that Chanel was intimate with Spatz. “She starts having the affair with him in the hope that he will help get André out of the prisoner-of-war camp,” Picardie says. But Picardie, who has seen The New Look, says the present solely exhibits one facet of the designer—focusing solely on her Nazi associations with out exhibiting that she additionally had a task within the resistance motion. Chanel let members of the French resistance take over her dwelling within the south of France, often known as La Pausa. “Her cellars were used to hide Jewish refugees,” Picardie says.

It is true that some Nazis wished to make the most of Chanel’s friendship with U.Ok. Prime Minister Winston Churchill to get a message to him. Chanel and Churchill know one another by means of the Duke of Westminster, who was a detailed good friend of Churchill’s. Chanel and Churchill turned good associates because of this, even went fishing collectively, and each time Churchill was in Paris for work, he’d look her up. The Nazis that Chanel interacted with “hoped she would get a message to Churchill, saying that there were people within the German high command, who had become profoundly disillusioned by Hitler,” in line with Picardie. But the plan didn’t work out as a result of it trusted assembly Churchill in Madrid, and Churchill didn’t find yourself going.

Christian Dior’s resistance fighter sister

As The New Look portrays, Christian Dior was very near his youthful sister Catherine, performed by Maisie Williams within the present. The two grew shut after their mom died and their father went bankrupt through the Great Depression, and Catherine was his first mannequin when he began designing garments. Their dad and mom gave the Dior siblings their love of gardening, and when World War II broke out, they planted greens to outlive the rationing. In truth, in 1939 and 1940, Christian Dior served within the French military, serving to farmers develop their crops.

By 1944, the Dior siblings are sharing a Paris house collectively, as The New Look exhibits. He’s designing garments for Lucien Lelong, and Catherine is embedded with the French resistance motion, “She’s working with a network that was gathering intelligence for the allies,” says Picardie, whose guide Miss Dior: A Story of Courage and Couture impressed The New Look’s portrayal of Catherine. The scene in The New Look that captures this facet of Catherine’s work is when Williams lets a Nazi guard seduce her and units a lure; folks working for the resistance leap out and assault him. In the final weeks of the occupation of France, Catherine is captured and winds up in three focus camps throughout Germany, together with Ravensbrück as talked about within the present.

Picardie needs that The New Look confirmed how Catherine grew the roses that went into the fragrance “Miss Dior”, launched in 1947 as a part of Dior’s New Look assortment. Catherine’s rose fields nonetheless exist in the present day.

How World War II formed trend

Many of the couture homes closed store through the warfare. Dior labored for Lucien Lelong’s couture home, which was one of many ones that stayed open, and that meant he was designing clothes for the wives of Nazi officers.

In the late Forties, after the warfare, Dior began his personal couture home, bankrolled by textile tycoon Marcel Boussac, because the present portrays. Harper’s Bazaar Editor-in-Chief Carmel Snow (performed by Glenn Close within the TV present) nicknamed Dior’s 1947 assortment “New Look.”

Padded clothes objects are one trend development popularized round World War II. As Picardie explains, Dior’s sister Catherine “was emaciated when she returned and so many other women are very thin because of rationing. Soft padding around the hips, bust, shoulders are like a form of protection.”

As Dior described his imaginative and prescient for his “New Look” assortment, per TIME journal’s 1957 cowl story on the style designer, “‘We were leaving a period of war, of uniforms, of soldier-women with shoulders like boxers. I turned them into flowers, with soft shoulders, blooming bosoms, waists slim as vine stems, and skirts opening up like blossoms.’”