Delettre was not interested in reinventing wartime French fashions, his goal was to recreate it.

I also detect a lot of research in period fashion mags including L’Officiel, which the character Mme Schwartz seems to follow religiously (that’s her above in the grey and white tartan pattern suit, and black and white hat). In the quest for authenticity, costume designer Thierry Delettre explained in an interview with a French newspaper that he referred to Dominique Veillon’s book ‘Fashion Under Occupation’ for his fashion information. Historian Jean-Pierre Azéma, a specialist in the Second World War, was an historical adviser for the series, and you can tell accuracy was a goal for the production. I am currently about half way through the series (and thus halfway through the war because, like Mad Men, every season represents a year) and I am consistently impressed by the quality and accuracy of the costuming.

Currently available on MHz in Canada and Netflix in the U.S., two or three episodes of this series have been filling my October evenings. The series was filmed in various locations around Limousin, but set in the fictional town of Villeneuve in eastern France, located somewhere around Besançon near the Vichy demarcation line, during World War II.

The past few weeks I have been binge-watching Un Village Français – a French television series (in French with English subtitles) that originally aired between 20. Thierry Delettre with costumes from A French Village