Christian Dior

Christian Dior
Dior Logo
Personal Information
Name	Christian Dior
Nationality	French
Birth date	January 21, 1905
Birth place	Granville, Manche, Normandy
Date of death	October 23, 1957
Working Life
Label Name	Christian Dior

Christian Dior (January 21, 1905 – October 23, 1957), was the most influential French fashion designer of the late 1940s and 1950s. After the dreary dress apparel of the war years, women were seeking a more elegant and feminine look which Dior created with his "New Look" line of clothing. His designs which graced celebrities from actress Rita Hayworth to former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy to ballerina Margot Fonteyn contributed much needed panache to an era of post-war prosperity. Although there were criticisms, particularly by feminists, of his extravagant use of fabric and his restrictive and decorative use of corsets and and crinoline, Dior himself described the "New Look" as "youth, hope and the future."

Edna Woolman Chase, editor of Vogue magazine from 1914-1952, said, "His clothes, while wearable gave women the feeling of being charmingly costumed. There was a saintly romantic flavor about them."

Dior, a successful businessman as well as a consummate designer, created licensing agreements that established a fashion empire which continues to market perfume, furs, and accessories around the world. Dior boutiques can be found in numerous cities nationwide with their main flagship stores located in New York, Beverly Hills, Waikiki, Boston, and San Francisco.

Biography

He was born in 1905 in Granville, a seaside town off of the coast of Normandy, France. Encouraged by his family who harbored hopes that he would become a diplomat, Dior attended the Ecole des Sciences Politiques from 1923 to 1926. However, his real aspirations lay with studying Fine Art. In 1928 his father gave him money to open an art gallery on condition that the family name not appear on the door. [1] At his gallery he displayed paintings by Pablo Picasso, Max Jacob and Jean Cocteau but two deaths in the family - that of his brother and mother - forced him to close.

In the 1930s Dior made a living by doing sketches for the haute couture Houses of Robert Piguet and Lucien Lelong. Initially his hat designs were more popular than his dress designs. In 1945 he was hired by textile magnate Marcel Boussac, who was attracted to Dior's new fashion concept requiring layers of extravagant fabrics. The merging of the two; the luxurious fabrics of Boussac with the inspired designs of Dior, gave rise to his first collection, the Corolle Line which premiered in 1947. [2] In 1949 he established the eponymous fashion house, Christian Dior New York, Inc. and each new line of clothing that he introduced, the Zig Zag line, the A Line, and so forth, met with success.

Throughout the 1950s, Christian Dior was the largest, most well run haute couture house in Paris. Although he experienced unparalled success with his designs, he began to experience competition from the more relaxed look promoted by designers such as Coco Chanel, whose philosophy of fashion stated that "clothes should be relaxed, ageless, dateless, and easy to wear." Dior's reaction was to introduce his most unstructured collection, the "Lily of the Valley" line with its casual jackets, pleated skirts and sailor-collared blouses.

With his new found wealth Dior bought an old mill near Fontainebleau outside Paris and a flower farm at Montauroux in the heart of Provence, where he could indulge his love of art, antiques and gardening. Extremely shy by nature, he left socializing to Suzanne Luling, his effervescent sales director. As he grew older, he grew increasingly superstitious as well. Each Dior collection had to contain a coat called the “Granville,” named after his birthplace, and at least one model was required to wear a corsage containing his favorite flower, lily of the valley. Reportedly, he never opened a fashion show without first consulting with a clairvoyant.

In 1957, Dior went for a "rest cure" at a spa in northern Italy and died of a heart attack after choking on a fishbone at dinner. The French newspaper Le Monde hailed him as a man “identified with good taste, the art of living and refined culture that epitomizes Paris to the outside world.” [3] Marcel Boussac sent his private plane to Montecatini to bring Dior’s body back to Paris where some 2,500 people attended his funeral including staff and many world renowned celebrities, who were also favored clientele such as the Duchess of Windsor.

In 1958 at only 21 years of age, Yves Saint Laurent was named as Dior’s successor and unveiled his first collection which was an immediate success with its softer, lighter, easier to wear style. After he was conscripted into the French army, a succession of designers took over including Marc Bohan and John Galliano. The House of Dior continued to grow, along with its renown, into a fashion empire that now sold furs, scarves, knitwear, lingerie, costume jewelry and shoes.

The New Look

The actual phrase the "New Look" was coined by the powerful editor-in-chief of Harpers Bazaar, Carmel Snow. After the the war women, who had been in uniform or wore the boxy shapes of the 1940s, responded to the classic elegance and femininity of the Dior line of clothing. The "New Look" was reminiscent of the Belle Epoque ideal, which Dior's mother had worn in the early 1900s, featuring long skirts, tiny waists and beautiful fabrics. The dresses were lined predominantly with percale. They had bustier-style bodices, hip padding, wasp-waisted corsets and petticoats that made them flare out from the waist giving his models an hourglass shape. The New Look revolutionized women's dress and re-established war-ravaged Paris, as the center, once again, of the fashion world.

The "New Look" also came under criticism for its emphasis on restrictive padding and corsets, and for its extravagant use of fabric at a time when clothes were still being rationed following World War II. However, as shortages became less of a problem the criticism of Dior's designs lessened. Dior himself was quoted as saying, "I have designed flower women."

The Dior years

Along with partner, Jacques Rouët built up the Dior business into an international ???. 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, with the US market in mind.

The house was run along rigidly hierarchical lines. Each of the vendeuses, or sales assistants, had her own clients with whom she was expected to nurture friendly relationships. The ateliers, or workrooms, were staffed by seamstresses, many of whom had worked there since leaving school. During the twice-yearly haute couture shows in late January and early August, some 2,500 people filed in and out of the Dior salons to see the new collections. Each show included up to two hundred outfits and lasted as long as two and a half hours. The models, or mannequins as they were called, came from the same privileged backgrounds as the clients and were hired in different shapes and sizes to show how the clothes would look on different women.

Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, May 11, 1962. Mrs. Kennedy wears candy pink silk-dupioni shantung gown designed by Guy Douvier for Christian Dior.

Popular Dior clientele included: Hollywood stars, New York socialites and department store buyers, such as the Marshall Fields store in Chicago, who bought the exclusive rights to individual designs to be made up by their own seamstresses. Discount clothing chains, like Ohrbach’s, were allowed to attend the shows on condition that they bought a minimum number of outfits, which they were then allowed to replicate into “knock-off” lines. 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.

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 and when on to become Dior's successor after his untimely death.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Decades of Beauty: The Changing Image of Women 1890-1990s. Hamlyn: New York (1998)
• "Christian Dior," Contemporary Fashion, 2nd ed. St. James Press, 2002. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2007.

External links

• Beth Duncuff Charleston, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000: "Christian Dior (1905–1957)", Timeline of Art History, Retrieved May 21, 2007.
• "Home Page", Dior, Retrieved May 21, 2007.
• "Christian Dior: Fashion Designer (1905-1957)", Design Museum, Retrieved May 21, 2007.
• "Infomat" Fashion Industry Search Engine, Retrieved June 19, 2007
• "Timeline Fashion" "Timeline Fashion: Christian Dior," Retrieved June 22, 2007.

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