by The world of fashion has always been of particular interest, with its cast of eccentric characters and sense of high drama. But 2024 has been a great year for sartorial onslaught playing out on the small screen, with dozens of documentaries, biopics and TV series attempting to lift the lid on the inner workings of the industry. From Disney+’s In Vogue: The 90s and Cristóbal Balenciagato Apple TVs The Supermodels and The New Lookit seems like every few weeks there’s another fashion-focused series to binge on.
It is the next one The Maison10-part series coming to Apple TV this weekend, right in the middle of fashion month. The French response was given to Successionit follows an inter-family power struggle at the helm of a fictional French fashion house, Ledu, which is thrown into disarray when its 40-year-old designer, Vincent Ledu (played by Lambert Wilson), is recorded making racial slurs.
Adding to the family drama is the news that Vincent’s estranged brother Victor (Pierre Deladonchamps) is married to the daughter of Ledu’s archivist, Rovel, and his mother-in-law, Diane (Carole Bouquet), is also trying to get Ledu. an act of revenge. Meanwhile, Vincent’s former muse Perle (Amira Casar) has installed Paloma Castel (Zita Hanrot) in the top seat – an emerging sustainable designer in the vein of Marine Serre, Clara Daguin and Victor Weinsanto – which contributed greatly to the taste of the family. .
It’s no wonder fashion makes such exciting TV and cinematic fodder, from the machinations of American Vogue and Anna Wintour in The Devil Wears Prada plotting the murders of the Gucci family i House of Gucci. After all, as well as being extremely glamorous (and therefore visually pleasing) there is also a lot of money involved, which means high drama.
“The fashion industry has always been a subject of interest in popular culture,” he says Business Vogue on Lucy Maguire. “It’s exclusive, it’s glamorous, it’s next to celebrities and it’s constantly changing. And even now, when so much of the industry is captured and shared through people’s phones, viewers are still curious to see what goes on behind closed doors. The more spectacular the productions, the more buzz they generate.”
“It’s been a long and rarefied life in fashion with only glimpses here and there, but that changed with the advent of social media, whose prevalence probably increased people’s interest and desire in it as they are now. can get it on tap,” agrees freelance fashion editor Jessica Bumpus. “Everyone loves a good story and fashion is full of myths and legends, so the story goes like a joke. In a very online world you had to be there in real life to know.”
Those who know them will certainly draw parallels between the main characters of the show and some of the main actors of fashion. “We approached it with the same level of care as a couture house does a collection,” said designer Valentine Milville WWD. “We tried to create real identities for the brands and houses that were represented.”
First, Vincent’s downfall feels reminiscent of designer John Galliano’s infamous anti-Semitic rants in October 2010 and February 2011, which were recorded by viewers and widely shared with the media, which led to his departure from Dior.
Then there is the scheming between the Ledu family and their rivals the Rovels over who has the biggest fashion empire, which brings to mind the real-life titans of fashion, Bernard Arnault and François-Henri Pinault. While LVMH’s stable includes the former’s 75 fashion, jewellery, cosmetics and beverage brands, including Christian Dior and Louis Vuitton, the most famous are a handful of top houses such as Kering Group, Gucci, Balenciaga and Saint Laurent. .
Their rivalry played out over the years, but began in earnest in the 1990s, after Arnault discreetly bought a 34 percent stake in fashion house Gucci by slowly increasing his shares. Unhappy with this outcome, then-Gucci designer Tom Ford turned to Pinault, who helped stage a coup d’etat, effectively buying majority ownership and rapidly reducing Arnault’s share price in the process.
Since then, the two have been embroiled in a fashion cold war, with tensions rising from time to time, including when Kering acquired a 51 percent stake in a brand called Alexander McQueen, when it still in charge of Givenchy, a stable partner of LVMH. . Similar financial fights took place over Fendi in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when LVMH teamed up with Prada to stop Kering from taking full control of the brand. Today, LVMH rivals Kering Group, turning over $93 billion a year in profits compared to $21 billion, and Arnault is one of the five richest men in the world.
Actress Carole Bouquet plays Diane Rovel, Ledu’s rival boss, who has clear similarities to Arnault – her character is the richest woman in Europe, and is called a “wolf in a suit”, which mimics a nickname real life Arnault, “the wolf in cashmere”.
Meanwhile Lambert Wilson, played by Vincent Ledu, drew on Hubert de Givenchy as his inspiration, telling WWD: “In the series, there are many fights: generational fights and social fights. It’s a gentleman, and it makes a big difference. They know they have power. I thought of Hubert de Givenchy, who was the epitome of all that.”
