╳ The most influential fashion designer of the late 1940s and 50s, Christian Dior dominated fashion after World war II with the hourglass silhouette of his voluptuous New Look. He also defined a new business model in the post-war fashion industry by establishing Dior as a global brand across a wide range of products. “My mother says that when I was little my grandfather used to take me and my cousins on one side after dinner and ask us what we wanted to be when he grew up, and I’d say “Christian Dior,” recalled fashion designer Christian Lacroix. ╳ A short, pear-shaped man, with an habitually nervous expression, Dior was courted by Parisian society, but so shy that he could barely bring himself to bow to his audience at the end of each couture show. Fastidious to a fault, Dior refused to receive any man who was not wearing a tie and was so superstitious that he consulted his clairvoyant before every major decision.
╳ Christian Dior was born on January 21, 1905, in the small town of Granville, in Normandy. His wealthy parents moved the family to Paris when he was five, and there he went to college and studied post-graduate Political Science, making many friends in intellectual and artistic circles. All Dior wanted was to work in the arts. In 1928, his father gave him enough money to open an art gallery on condition that the family name did not appear above the door. This would-be architect who later remarked , "(I was) prevented by my family and circumstances from ever gratifying this passion," showcased the works of de Chirico, Utrillo, Braque, Fernand Léger and the paintings of friends Max Jacob and Christian Bérard. Disaster struck in 1931 however when the death of Dior’s older brother was followed by that of his mother and the collapse of the family firm. The gallery closed and for the next few years Dior scraped a living by selling fashion sketches to haute couture houses and illustrated the fashion pages of Le Figaro newspaper, a talent which led to him being hired as a designer, firstly for the house of Robert Piguet in 1938 and then, Lucien Lelong in 1941.
╳ Five years later, textile tycoon Marcel Boussac met Dior and listened to his theory that the public was ready for a new style after the War. Dior’s description of a luxurious new look with a sumptuous silhouette and billowing skirts had an obvious appeal to a man who owed his wealth to selling large quantities of fabric. Boussac decided to finance Dior's own couture house, purchasing the gracious mansion at 30, Avenue Montaigne which is still home to the house of Dior.
╳ The first Christian Dior couture show was scheduled for 12 February 1947. Clothes were still scarce and women wore the sharp-shouldered suits with knee-length skirts that they had cobbled together as makeshift wartime versions of Elsa Schiaparelli’s slinky 1930s silhouette. The Paris couture trade, which had dominated international fashion since the late 18th century, was in a precarious state. What it needed was excitement and Christian Dior delivered it in a collection of luxurious clothes with soft shoulders, wispy waists and full flowing skirts intended for what he called “flower women”. “It’s quite a revelation dear Christian,” pronounced Carmel Snow, the editor of Harper’s Bazaar, the US magazine. “Your dresses have such a new look.”╳ The New Look was absolutely appropriate for the post-war era. Dior was correct in assuming that people wanted something new after years of war, brutality and hardship and his “flower women” fitted the bill perfectly. Behind the scenes Jacques Rouët built up the Dior business. The old Paris couture houses were small operations making bespoke clothes for private clients. Some couturiers had diversified into other products, notably Chanel and Jean Patou into perfume, and Elsa Schiaparelli into hosiery. Rouët realised that the future lay in diversifying further afield into more products and international markets. Eager to capitalise on the publicity generated by the New Look, he opened a fur subsidiary and a ready-to-wear boutique on New York’s Fifth Avenue as well as launching a Dior perfume, named Miss Dior with the US market in mind.
╳ Christian Dior too had sound commercial instincts. When a US hosiery company offered Rouët the then-enormous fee of $10,000 for the rights to manufacture Dior stockings, the couturier proposed waiving the fee in favour of a percentage of the product’s sales thereby introducing the royalty payment system to fashion. Dior’s approach to design was equally pragmatic. Resisting the temptation to experiment, he adhered to his luxurious look with the structured silhouette of padding, starch and corsets, which was so flattering to his middle-aged clients. So conservative were those clients that when Dior called a suit the “Jean-Paul Sartre” in honour of the radical philosopher, no one bought it and he stuck to ‘safer’ names in future. He even adhered to the same commercial formula for each collection: one third new, one third adaptations of familiar styles and one third proven classics.
╳ The newly wealthy Dior bought an old mill near Fontainebleau outside Paris and a flower farm at Montauroux in the heart of Provence, where he could potter around with Bobby, his dog, and indulge his love of art, antiques and gardening. Still shy, he left socialising to Suzanne Luling, his vivacious sales director, and he grew even more superstitious with age - every collection included a coat called the “Granville”, named after his birthplace, at least one model wore a bunch of his favourite flower, lily of the valley; and he never began a couture show without having consulted his tarot card reader.
╳ Throughout the 1950s Christian Dior was the biggest and best-run haute couture house in Paris. The closest rivals were Pierre Balmain, and the enigmatic Spanish designer, Cristobál Balenciaga. Yet neither had the same support structure as Dior who, as well as Jacques Rouët and Suzanne Luling, had the “three muses” who worked with him on the collections: Raymonde Zehnmacker who ran the studio; Marguerite Carré, head of the workrooms; and Mitza Bricard, the glamorous hat designer and chief stylist.
╳ As the most prestigious Paris couture house, Dior attracted the most talented assistants. One was Pierre Cardin, an Italian-born tailor who was Dior’s star assistant in the late 1940s before leaving to begin his own business. Another was Yves Saint Laurent, a gifted young Algeria-born designer who joined in 1955 as the star graduate of the Chambre Syndicale fashion school. As timid as Dior himself, the young Saint Laurent flourished in the feminine atmosphere of the couture house and contributed 35 outfits for the autumn 1957 collection. When all the fittings for the collection were finished, Dior took off for a rest cure at his favourite spa town of Montecatini in northern Italy hoping to lose weight in order to impress a young lover.
╳ Ten days later Dior died of a heart attack after choking on a fishbone at dinner. The French newspaper Le Monde hailed him as a man who was “identified with good taste, the art of living and refined culture that epitomises Paris to the outside world”. Marcel Boussac sent his private plane to Montecatini to bring Dior’s body back to Paris. Some 2,500 people attended his funeral including all his staff and famous clients led by the Duchess of Windsor. A fortnight later Jacques Rouët called a press conference to announce the new structure of the house of Christian Dior. “The studio will be run by Madame Zehnmacker, the couture workshops by Madame Marguerite Carré,” he announced. “Mitza Bricard will continue to exercise her good taste over the collections. All the sketches will be the responsibility of Yves Mathieu-Saint-Laurent.”╳ The first Christian Dior collection after Dior’s death was a sensation. Designed in just 9 weeks by the 21 year-old Yves Saint Laurent, the clothes were as meticulously made and perfectly proportioned as Dior’s in the same exquisite fabrics, but their young designer made them softer, lighter and easier to wear. Saint Laurent was hailed as a national hero. Emboldened by his success, his designs became more daring culminating in the 1960 Beat Look inspired by the existentialists in the Saint-Germain des Près cafés and jazz clubs. Marcel Boussac was furious and, in spring 1960, when Saint Laurent was called up to join the French army, the Dior management raised no objection.
╳ Saint Laurent was conscripted in the army and, after demobilisation, he opened his own couture house. He was replaced at Dior by Marc Bohan, who instilled his conservative style on the collections until 1996 when the iconoclastic designer John Galliano, was appointed chief designer of Christian Dior by the company’s new owner, the LVMH luxury goods group. The rest, as they say, is history.
╳ Images (top to bottom)
Christian Dior’s New Look, 1947
Christian Dior Fashion Notebook Spring Summer 1947/48
Yves Saint Laurent uses chalk to sketch fashion designs
House of Christian Dior, 1957
Christian Dior with mannequins
