Christian Dior

Christian Ernest Dior (French: [kʁistjɑ̃ djɔʁ]; 21 January 1905 – 24 October 1957) was a French fashion designer, best known as the founder of one of the world's top fashion houses, Christian Dior SE, which is now owned by parent company LVMH. His fashion houses are known all around the world, having gained prominence "on five continents in only a decade."[2]

This article is about the fashion designer. For the company, see Dior.

Christian Dior
Dior in 1954
Born(1905-01-21)21 January 1905
Granville, France
Died24 October 1957(1957-10-24) (aged 52)
Montecatini Terme, Tuscany, Italy
Resting placeCimetière de Callian, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France[1]
Alma materSciences Po
LabelChristian Dior
Parents
Relatives

Dior's skills led to his employment and design for various fashion icons in attempts to preserve the fashion industry during World War II. Post-war, he founded and established the Dior fashion house, with his collection of the "New Look".

Throughout his lifetime, he won numerous awards for Best Costume Design. Upon his death in 1957, various contemporary icons paid tribute to his life and work.

Early life
The Christian Dior Home and Museum in Granville, France

Christian Dior was born in Granville, a seaside town on the coast of Normandy, France. He was the second of five children born to Maurice Dior, a wealthy fertilizer manufacturer (the family firm was Dior Frères), and his wife, formerly Madeleine Martin. He had four siblings: Raymond (father of Françoise Dior), Jacqueline, Bernard, and Catherine Dior.[3] When Christian was about five years old, the family moved to Paris, but still returned to the Normandy coast for summer holidays.

Dior's family had hoped he would become a diplomat, but Dior wished to be involved in art.[4] To make money, he sold his fashion sketches outside his house for about 10 cents each ($2 in 2021 dollars [5]). In 1928, Dior left school and received money from his father to finance a small art gallery, where he and a friend sold art by the likes of Pablo Picasso. The gallery was closed three years later, following the deaths of Dior's mother and brother, as well as financial trouble during the Great Depression that resulted in his father losing control of the family business. Dior had no choice but to find another source of income to support himself.[6]

In search of work, Dior created fashion sketches and ended up selling them. His sketches later got him discovered by Robert Piquet.[7] From 1937, Dior was employed by the fashion designer Robert Piguet, who gave him the opportunity to design for three Piguet collections.[8][9] Dior would later say that "Robert Piguet taught me the virtues of simplicity through which true elegance must come."[10][11] One of his original designs for Piguet, a day dress with a short, full skirt called "Cafe Anglais", was particularly well received.[8][9] Whilst at Piguet, Dior worked alongside Pierre Balmain, and was succeeded as house designer by Marc Bohan – who would, in 1960, become head of design for Christian Dior Paris.[9] Dior left Piguet when he was called up for military service.

In 1942, when Dior left the army, he joined the fashion house of Lucien Lelong, where he and Balmain were the primary designers. For the duration of World War II, Dior, as an employee of Lelong, designed dresses for the wives of Nazi officers and French collaborators, as did other fashion houses that remained in business during the war, including Jean Patou, Jeanne Lanvin, and Nina Ricci.[12][13] His sister, Catherine (1917–2008), served as a member of the French Resistance, was captured by the Gestapo, and sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, where she was incarcerated until her liberation in May 1945.[14] In 1947, he named his debut fragrance Miss Dior in tribute to his sister.

The Dior fashion house
The "Bar Suit" on display at the Denver Art Museum (2019)

In 1946, Marcel Boussac, a successful entrepreneur, invited Dior to design for Philippe et Gaston, a Paris fashion house launched in 1925.[15] Dior refused, wishing to make a fresh start under his own name rather than reviving an old brand.[16] In 1946, with Boussac's backing, Dior founded his fashion house. The name of the line of his first collection, presented on 12 February 1947,[17] was Corolle (literally the botanical term corolla or circlet of flower petals in English). Dior's debut collection included a launch of 90 garments displayed in outfits. The phrase New Look was coined for it by Carmel Snow, the editor-in-chief of Harper's Bazaar.

Despite being called "New", it was clearly drawn from styles of the Edwardian era.[18][19][20] The New Look merely refined and crystallized trends in skirt shape and waistline that had been burgeoning in high fashion since the late 1930s.[21][22] Dior's designs were more voluptuous than the boxy, fabric-conserving shapes of the recent World War II styles, influenced by the wartime rationing of fabric.[23] The house employed Pierre Cardin as head of its tailoring atelier for the first three years of its existence,[24] and it was Cardin who designed the 1947 Bar suit for Dior.[25]

The "New Look" revolutionized women's dress and reestablished Paris as the centre of the fashion world after World War II,[26][27] as well as making Dior a virtual arbiter of fashion for much of the following decade.[28] Dior's collection was an inspiration to many women post war, and helped them regain their love for fashion.[29] Each season featured a newly titled Dior "line", in the manner of 1947's "Corolle" line, that would then be trumpeted in the fashion press: the Envol and Cyclone/Zigzag lines in 1948; the Trompe l'Oeil and Mid-Century lines in 1949; the Vertical and Oblique lines in 1950; the Naturelle/Princesse and Longue lines in 1951; the Sinueuse and Profilėe lines in 1952; the Tulipe and Vivante lines in 1953; the Muguet/Lily of the Valley line and H-Line in 1954; the A-Line and Y-Line in 1955; the Flèche/Arrow and Aimant/Magnet lines in 1956; and the Libre/Free and Fuseau/Spindle lines in 1957,[30][31][32] followed by successor Yves Saint Laurent's Trapeze line in 1958.[33][34]

In 1955, the 19-year-old Yves Saint Laurent became Dior's design assistant. Dior told Yves Saint Laurent's mother in 1957 that he had chosen Saint Laurent to succeed him at Dior. She indicated later that she had been confused by the remark, as Dior was only 52 at the time.[35]

Death

Dior died of a sudden heart attack while on vacation in Montecatini, Italy, on 24 October 1957 in the late afternoon while playing a game of cards.[36] He was survived by Jacques Benita, a North African singer three decades his junior, the last of a number of discreet male lovers.[37][38][39]

Awards and honors
Dior on a Romanian stamp (2005)

Dior was nominated for the 1955 Academy Award for Best Costume Design in black and white for the Terminal Station directed by Vittorio De Sica (1953). Dior was also nominated in 1967 for a BAFTA for Best British Costume (Colour) for the Arabesque directed by Stanley Donen (1966).[40] Nominated in 1986 for his contributions to the 1985 film, Bras de fer, he was up for Best Costume Design (Meilleurs costumes) during the 11th Cesar Awards.[41]

See also

References
  1. Var: Côte d'Azur, Verdon, by Dominique Auzias, Jean-Paul Labourdette, Nouvelles éditions de l'Université, 1 January 2010, pg 150
  2. "The History of the House of Dior". 20 November 2018.
  3. Pochna, M-F. (1996). Christian Dior: The Man Who Made the World Look New p. 5, Arcade Publishing. ISBN 1-55970-340-7.
  4. Pochna, Marie-France (1996). Christian Dior: The Man Who Made the World Look New (1st English language ed.). New York: Arcade Pub. p. 207. ISBN 1-55970-340-7.
  5. 1634–1699: McCusker, J. J. (1997). How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States: Addenda et Corrigenda (PDF). American Antiquarian Society. 1700–1799: McCusker, J. J. (1992). How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States (PDF). American Antiquarian Society. 1800–present: Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. "Consumer Price Index (estimate) 1800–". Retrieved 16 April 2022.
  6. "Christian Dior (1905-1957)". The Business of Fashion. Retrieved 14 May 2023.
  7. "Christian Dior (1905-1957)". The Business of Fashion. Retrieved 14 May 2023.
  8. Marly, Diana de (1990). Christian Dior. London: B.T. Batsford. p. 12. ISBN 978-0-7134-6453-5. Dior designed three collections while at Piguet's, and the most famous dress he created then was the Cafe Anglais
  9. Pochna, Marie-France (1996). Christian Dior: The Man Who Made the World Look New. Translated by Savill, Joanna (1st English language ed.). New York: Arcade Pub. pp. 62, 72, 74, 80, 102. ISBN 978-1-55970-340-6. Robert Piguet.
  10. Grainger, Nathalie (2010). Quintessentially Perfume. London: Quintessentially Pub. Ltd. p. 125. ISBN 978-0-9558270-6-8.
  11. Picken, Mary Brooks; Dora Loues Miller (1956). Dressmakers of France: The Who, How, and why of the French Couture. Harper. p. 105.
  12. Jayne Sheridan, Fashion, Media, Promotion: The New Black Magic (John Wiley & Sons, 2010), p. 44.
  13. Yuniya Kawamura, The Japanese Revolution in Fashion (Berg Publishers, 2004), page 46. As quoted in the book, Lelong was a leading force in keeping the French fashion industry from being forcibly moved to Berlin, arguing, "You can impose anything upon us by force, but Paris couture cannot be uprooted, neither as a whole or in any part. Either it stays in Paris, or it does not exist. It is not within the power of any nation to steal fashion creativity, for not only does it function quite spontaneously, also it is the product of a tradition maintained by a large body of skilled men and women in a variety of crafts and trades." Kawamura explains that the survival of the French fashion industry was critical to the survival of France, stating, "Export of a single dress by a leading couturier enabled the country to buy ten tons of coal, and a liter of perfume was worth two tons of petrol" (page 46).
  14. Sereny, Gitta (2002). The Healing Wound: Experiences and Reflections, Germany, 1938–2001. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. pp. 15–16. ISBN 0-393-04428-9.
  15. Palmer, Alexandra (Spring 2010). "Dior's Scandalous New Look". ROM Magazine. Royal Ontario Museum. Retrieved 6 November 2015.
  16. Pochna, Marie-France (1996). Christian Dior: The Man Who Made the World Look New. Translated by Savill, Joanna (1st English language ed.). New York: Arcade Pub. pp. 90–92. ISBN 978-1-55970-340-6.
  17. Company History at Dior's website Archived 7 November 2008 at the Wayback Machine
  18. Morris, Bernadine (29 July 1976). "A Revolutionary Saint Laurent Showing". The New York Times: 65. Retrieved 16 March 2022. [T]he collection Christian Dior showed in 1947 ... was Edwardian
  19. Mulvagh, Jane (1988). "1946-1956". Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion. London, England: Viking, the Penguin Group. pp. 180–181. ISBN 0-670-80172-0. Dior's New Look was still relying on old-fashioned underpinnings like boned corsetry ... Fashion ... reviv[ed] the mock-Edwardian style first presented in the late thirties. ... [Dior's] tighter waists, longer, fuller skirts and more pronounced hips were in fact the maximization of an old style
  20. "Christian Dior Cuts Skirt Length in Move Disrupting Couture World". The New York Times: 28. 10 February 1948. As in 1900, horizontal strips of tucked lawn, lace insertion and Valenciennes ruching alternate from décolletage to hem...
  21. Mulvagh, Jane (1988). "1947". Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion. London, England: Viking, the Penguin Group. p. 194. ISBN 0-670-80172-0. [T]he trend towards longer skirts, smaller waists and feminine lines had begun in the late thirties and was seen in America in the early forties; hence Dior was not the originator of this mode, but its rejuvenator and popularist.
  22. Cunningham, Bill (1 March 1988). "Fashionating Rhythm". Details. New York, NY: Details Publishing Corp. VI (8): 121. ISSN 0740-4921. Each of the major fashion changes that mark a season is the result of a series of creative designers adding essential elements to the overall picture. The eventual credit for the genius is often given to the designer who articulated the look with commercial success, such as Dior achieved with his 1947 New Look, although it had been seen in small prototypes at Balenciaga in the early Forties and at other Paris houses just before the war.
  23. Grant, L. (22 September 2007). "Light at the end of the tunnel". The Guardian, Life & Style. London. Retrieved 11 November 2013.
  24. "Cardin First Struck Gold with Suit Made for Dior". The New York Times: 22. 27 August 1958. Retrieved 5 April 2023. Cocteau and Berard...introduced...Cardin to [Dior,] who was...preparing his first fashion collection...Cardin designed, cut, and made a coat and a suit. He showed them to Dior, who...enrolled him on his team....Cardin spent three...years at Dior...
  25. "Cardin First Struck Gold with Suit Made for Dior". The New York Times: 22. 27 August 1958. Retrieved 5 April 2023. ...Cardin...designed one of the most successful models...a suit called 'Bar,' which buyers the world over bought.
  26. Morris, Bernadine (14 April 1981). "How Paris Kept Position in Fashion". The New York Times: B19. Retrieved 4 April 2022. Dior's bombshell brought manufacturers as well as store buyers rushing back to the City of Light as they sought to interpret his inspirational designs for their own clients....Throughout the 1950's, Paris was acclaimed as the source of fashion, and Dior's success helped stave off the development of other independent style centers for at least a decade.
  27. "Christian Dior – Fashionsizzle". fashionsizzle.com. 12 January 2014. Retrieved 2 November 2017.
  28. Howell, Georgina (1978). "1948-1959". In Vogue: Sixty Years of Celebrities and Fashion from British Vogue. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books Ltd. p. 204. ISBN 0-14-004955-X. Women obeyed Paris because of Christian Dior.
  29. "Christian Dior (1905-1957)". The Business of Fashion. Retrieved 14 May 2023.
  30. Howell, Georgina (1978). "1947, 1948-1959". In Vogue: Sixty Years of Celebrities and Fashion from British Vogue. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books Ltd. pp. 198, 204, 221–245. ISBN 0-14-004955-X. page range covering mention of Dior line names
  31. Mulvagh, Jane (1988). "1946-1956". Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion. London, England: Viking, The Penguin Group. pp. 194–248. ISBN 0-670-80172-0. page range covering mention of Dior line names
  32. Radieva, Krasimira (1 March 2019). "An Investigation of the Silhouettes of Christian Dior". Artte. 7 (3): 169–173. doi:10.15547/artte.2019.03.002. ISSN 1314-8796. Retrieved 5 May 2023.
  33. Howell, Georgina (1978). "1958". In Vogue: Sixty Years of Celebrities and Fashion from British Vogue. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books Ltd. p. 246. ISBN 0-14-004955-X.
  34. Mulvagh, Jane (1988). "1958". Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion. London, England: Viking, The Penguin Group. pp. 251–252. ISBN 0-670-80172-0.
  35. "Christian Dior". British Vogue. 5 April 2012. Retrieved 4 June 2020.
  36. "Died. Christian Dior, 52". Time. 4 November 1957. Archived from the original on 12 October 2007. Retrieved 7 March 2008.
  37. Zotoff, Lucy (25 December 2015). "Revolutions in fashion: Christian Dior". Haute Couture News. Retrieved 14 October 2022.
  38. Blanks, Tim (18 August 2002). "The Last Temptation of Christian". New York Times. Retrieved 14 October 2022.
  39. Du Plessix Gray, Francine (27 October 1996). "Prophets of Seduction". New Yorker. Retrieved 14 October 2022.
  40. "1967 Film British Costume Design – Colour | BAFTA Awards". Awards.bafta.org. Retrieved 12 February 2017.
  41. "Awards – Académie des Arts et Techniques du Cinéma". Academie-cinema.org. Archived from the original on 18 October 2014. Retrieved 12 February 2017.

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