The New Look

The New Look “ exhibition “NEW LOOK”. Haute Couture series 

By Paul Ecke and Loree Werner

Presented at the CECUT Museum

The “NEW LOOK” is a contemporary series of paintings and sewn works by artists Paul Ecke and Loree Werner that explores the elegance and creativity audacity of Parisian fashion during the 1930s and 1940s. Through richly layered paint, mixed media, and sculptural forms, the series reimagines the refined contours of high style design from this iconic era.  Grounded in the legacies of Christian Dior, Cristóbal Balenciaga, Pierre Balmain, Pierre Cardin, Lucien Lelong, Robert Piguet, and Yves Saint Laurent, the works elevate fashion beyond surface and silhouette. Each composition honors the power of accoutrements—gloves, shoes, hats, purses—rendered not as detail, but as core expressions of self, taste, and cultural identity.  In addition to the paintings, two hand-sewn garments offer tangible meditations on beauty and necessity. A wedding dress, made from repurposed parachute silk, speaks to wartime ingenuity and the preservation of elegance amid rationing and loss. A second dress, hand-stitched from painted paper bags, becomes a sculptural gesture of endurance, resourcefulness, and transformation.  Only one piece turns its gaze toward Coco Chanel—not as a celebration of her style, but as a critique of her alliance with the Nazi regime. Through the haunting interplay of her No. 5 perfume and the swastika, the work questions what fashion chooses to remember—and what it chooses to forget.  Presented at the CECUT Museum, “NEW LOOK invites viewers to reconsider glamour as a living archive: layered with memory, shaped by politics, and stitched with stories both beautiful and nostalgic.