Explaining the foundations and rituals of trend to somebody like me is about as futile an train as making an attempt to choose up anti-matter with a spoon. However give me a soapy TV drama a couple of high-end French trend home — led by a household dynasty that’s as dysfunctional because the Roys of Succession — and you’ve got my undivided consideration.
That’s as a result of, for all of the Parisian glamor and class that pervades a present like the brand new La Maison on Apple TV+, on the crux of it’s a company energy battle — one during which the progeny of the super-rich are always knifing one another within the again. The form of TV, in different phrases, that even a trend rube like me can admire.
The battle in La Maison is for management of a fictional high fashion home, and it’s a prospect that sends loads of bitchy, glamorous individuals scrambling for an angle. “Does she know our favourite dish is consuming one another alive?” one member of the family asks one other in an early episode.
It may very well be argued that the success of clothiers and luxurious conglomerates within the trend capital of the world has at all times rested upon an elusive ultimate: The promoting of goals. However La Maison, govt producer Alex Berger defined to me, forgoes that fairy story for all of the stuff you don’t see within the pages of Vogue — just like the egos and avarice that rule the trade, and the impact that wanting all of it can have on one’s soul.
“Dwelling in Paris, we’re surrounded by France’s primary trade: Luxurious and trend,” Berger mentioned. “Just like the Murdochs within the media world, we’ve The Trinity — Hermès, LVMH, and Chanel, complemented by L’Oréal, and their households are very intertwined with their companies. So, we had been in a position to be impressed by every thing that we learn and see about these households and their very own dysfunctions.”
The solid of La Maison contains Lambert Wilson, who performed the Merovingian in The Matrix. Right here, he’s Vincent Ledu, the legendary designer of the Ledu trend home that’s roughly analogous to Chanel. Chief among the many Ledu chan’s rivals are the Rovels — the household behind a luxurious empire paying homage to the Arnault family-owned LVMH.
La Maison wastes no time in chumming the waters. Vincent — a type of unyielding artist varieties for whom industrial imperatives are a niggling distraction — will get caught on tape venting his frustrations in a racist monologue that plunges Ledu into disaster. Shoppers begin pulling orders. An award is rescinded. Vincent is compelled to resign (the “stepping down of a king,” that’s what Lambert tells me drew him to the character), whereas Rovel’s chief govt, the calculating and gimlet-eyed Diane Rovel, strikes in for the kill.
Vincent’s defenestration is her likelihood to conquer Ledu as soon as and for all. Portrayed within the sequence by Carole Bouquet — a real-life trend icon herself and the face of Chanel No. 5 within the Eighties — the imperious Diane is the wealthiest girl in France; she fixates, however, on what she doesn’t have. “(Diane) needs to get all of it — to eat the world,” Bouquet tells me. “She’s that livid and that indignant” at life.
After they’re not obsessive about one another, the namesakes of Ledu and Rovel more and more concern themselves with legacy — extra particularly, to whom they’ll hand over the keys to their kingdoms. In a determined bid to salvage Ledu, in the meantime, Vincent’s right-hand girl Perle Foster (Amira Casar) has introduced an edgy younger designer into the fold — Paloma Castel, who runs a form of underground, eco-conscious trend line. She’s every thing Vincent isn’t; younger, progressive, a rule-breaker. She additionally occurs to be Vincent’s estranged daughter.
Vincent’s brother Victor is married to Diane’s daughter Caroline — a household defection stemming from a fallout with Vincent (he and Perle additionally keep an on-again, off-again affair). After which there’s Robinson, Vincent’s foppish and insecure nephew caught up in Diane’s scheming.
“They’ve loads of inadequacies, these characters,” Casar says. “They usually’re all in twisted relationships. They’re all shattered inside. All of them. Put collectively, it’s a really attention-grabbing cocktail — it reminds you of a Greek tragedy.”
In trend, clothes require considerate development to assist the wonder on the floor; trend is like structure in that manner, Coco Chanel is claimed to have remarked. Likewise, the inventive staff behind La Maison constructed their present on a basis of immaculate consideration to element. Precise trend designers — together with a purse designer who beforehand labored for Hermès — had been introduced in to craft every thing from unique garment linings to emblem buckles. The present additionally slips in cameos by trade figures like Balmain designer Olivier Rousteing and mannequin Eva Herzigova.
In La Maison, household pedigree is as a lot of an inheritance as the sort that’s measured in euros. However reasonably than a gilded cage, Vincent envisions one thing totally different for Paloma. Throughout a young second late within the season, he lets her in on a secret — that his maison is as fragile because the lace that’s weaved in its workroom. His implication, maybe, that solely an all-consuming love of the craft is sufficient to save Ledu from the nouveau-riche barbarians on the gate.
