CHRISTIAN

DIOR

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 Christian Dior
Fashion Designer, France

1905 - 1957

The most influential fashion designer of the
late 1940s and 1950s, CHRISTIAN DIOR (1905 to 1957)
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 grand-
father 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 the French fashion
designer Christian Lacroix.” He was so famous in France
at the time. It seemed as if he wasn’t a man, but an institu-
tion.”
When Lacroix was growing up in Arles during the
1950s, Christian Dior was indisputably the world’s most
famous fashion designer. His name was known all over the
world and his label accounted for half of France’s haute
couture exports. The Dior client list ran from Ava Gardner
and Marlene Dietrich to Princess Margaret and the Duch-
ess of Windsor. A short, pear-shaped man, with a shiny
bald pate and habitually nervous expression, he 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: yet was so supersti-
tious that he consulted his clairvoyant before every major
decision.

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 Christian Dior was born in 1905 in Granville, a
lively seaside town on the Normandy coast. He was the
second of the five children of Alexandre Louis Maurice
Dior, a wealthy fertiliser manufacturer. The family lived
in a pretty grey and pink house perched high on a cliff
with spectacular views over the sea. They moved to
Paris in 1910 returning to Granville for holidays each
summer. Dior longed to become an architect but, at his
father’s insistence, he enrolled at the prestigious Ecole
des Sciences Politiques (nicknamed Sciences Po’) in
Paris to take a degree in politics which, or so his parents
hoped, would prepare him for a diplomatic career.
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. Galerie Jacques Bonjean soon
became an avant garde haunt with paintings by Georges
Braque, Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau and Max Jacob
hanging on walls decorated by Christian Bérard. Disas-
ter struck in 1931 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. For the next few
years Dior scraped a living by selling fashion sketches
to haute couture houses. Finally he found a job as an
assistant to the couturier, Robert Piquet.
Coat, spring/summer 1953
Christian Dior (French, 1905–1957); Christian Dior Haute Couture (French,
founded 1947)
Silk
When World War II war began in 1939, Dior served
as an officer for the year until France’s surrender. He
joined his father and a sister on a farm in Provence until he
was offered a job in Paris by the couturier Lucien Lelong,
who was lobbying the Germans to revive the couture trade.
Dior spent the rest of the War dressing the wives of Nazi
officers and French collaborators. France emerged from
World War II in ruins. Half a million buildings were de-
stroyed. Clothes, coal and food were in short supply. Yet
there were ample opportunities for new business ventures
and fashion was no exception. Dior was invited by a child-
hood friend from Granville to revive Philippe et Gaston, a
struggling clothing company owned by Marcel Boussac,
the “King of Cotton” with an empire of racing stables, news-
papers and textile mills.
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 agreed to launch the new couture house in
style with a then-unprecedented budget of FFr60 million.
Jacques Rouët, a young civil servant, was appointed as
its administrator. The house of Dior and its 85 employees
moved into a modest mansion at 30 Avenue Montaigne
which was decorated in Dior’s favourite colours of white
and grey.
The first Christian Dior couture show was sched-
uled 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, waspy 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. His new look was reminiscent of the Belle Ep-
oque ideal of long skirts, tiny waists and beautiful fabrics
that his mother had worn in the early 1900s. Such a tradi-
tional concept of femininity also suited the political agenda.
Women had been mobilised during the war to work on
farms and in factories while the men were away fighting.
In peacetime those women were expected to return to
passive roles as housewives and mothers, leaving their
jobs free for the returning soldiers. The official paradigm
of post-war womanhood was a capable, caring housewife
who created a happy home for her husband and children.
Dior’s “flower women” fitted the bill perfectly.
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 His couture house was inundated with or-
ders. Rita Hayworth picked out an evening gown for
the première of her new movie, Gilda. The ballerina,
Margot Fonteyn, bought a suit. Dior put Paris back on
the fashion map. The US couture clients came back
in force for the autumn 1947 collections and Dior was
invited to stage a private presentation of that season’s
show for the British royal family in London, although
King George V forbade the young princesses, Eliza-
beth and Margaret, from wearing the New Look lest it
set a bad example at a time when rationing was still in
force for the general public.
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 per-
fume, and Elsa Schiaparelli into hosiery.
Every collection included a coat
called the “Granville”, named after
his birthplace. At least one model
wore a bunch of his favorite flower,
lily of the valley. And Dior never
began a couture show without having
consulted his tarot card reader.
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 com-
mercial 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
waïving 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 pragmat-
ic. Resisting the temptation to experiment, he adhered
to his luxurious look with the structured silhouette of pad-
ding, starch and corsets, which was so flattering to his
middle-aged clients.
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So conservative were those clients that when Dior
called a suit the “Jean-Paul Sartre” in honour of the radi-
cal philosopher, no one bought it and he stuck to ‘safer’
names in future. He even adhered to the same commer-
cial formula for each collection: one third new, one third
adaptations of familiar styles and one third proven clas-
sics.
The newly wealthy Dior bought an old mill near
Fontainebleau outside Paris and a flower farm at Mon-
tauroux 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 in-
cluded a coat called the “Granville”, named after his birth-
place. At least one model wore a bunch of his favourite
flower, lily of the valley. And Dior never began a couture
show without having consulted his tarot card reader.
Throughout the 1950s Christian Dior was the big-
gest and best-run haute couture house in Paris. The clos-
est 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.
The house was run along rigidly hierarchical lines.
Each of the vendeuses, or sales assistants, had their own
clients with whom they were 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.
The biggest clients were North American: Hol-
lywood stars, New York socialites and department store
buyers who bought the exclusive rights to individual de-
signs to be made up by their own seamstresses. Marshall
Fields, the Chicago store, had nine couture workshops
and a marble-lined salon, “The 28th Shop”. 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 copy stitch for
stitch into “knock-off” lines.
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 busi-
ness. 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 thirty-five outfits for the autumn 1957 collec-
tion. 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 epito-
mises 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 includ-
ing 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 nine weeks by
the 21 year-old Yves Saint Laurent, as he was called after
dropping the ‘Mathieu’, the clothes were as meticulously
made and perfectly proportioned as Dior’s in the same ex-
quisite 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 de-
mobilisation, he opened his own couture house. He was
replaced at Dior by Marc Bohan, who instilled his conser-
vative style on the collections until 1996 when the icono-
clastic young Briton, John Galliano, was appointed chief
designer of Christian Dior by the company’s new owner,
the LVMH luxury goods group.
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 1931 1939
1905
The Dior family When World War
Born in Gran-
business folds in II begins, Dior is
ville on the Gulf 1923
the depression. called up into the
of St Malo on To please his fa-
Forced to close French Army, but
the Normandy ther, Dior studies
the gallery, Dior is demobilised
coast, as the at the Ecole des
scrapes a living after a year when
second of five Sciences Politiques
by selling his art France surren-
children a (Sciences Po’) to
collection and ders and joins his
wealthy fertiliser prepare to join the
fashion sketches family on a farm in
manufacturer. diplomatic corp
to couturiers Provence.

1938 1941
1910 1928
The couturier Returns to Paris
The family Opens a modern
Robert Piguet to work as a de-
move to Paris art gallery, Galerie
employs Dior as sign assistant to
and Dior enrols Jacques Bonjean,
a design assis- Lucien Lelong.
at the Lycée with a friend and
Gerson financial backing tant at his new
from his father. couture house.

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 1948
1946 1954
Dior and Rouët open
After World War II After years of
a ready-to-wear bou-
ends, Dior persuades variations on 1956
tique in New York and,
the industrialist Marcel the New Look, Designs
over the next few years,
Boussac to back him Dior unveils over a dozen
launch new perfumes
in the opening of his his new direc- dresses for
and negotiate the licens-
own couture house to tion, the French Ava Gardner
ing rights for Christian
be managed by the Bean Line or in The Little
Dior hosiery, ties and
civil servant Jacques Flat Look. Hut.
other products.
Rouët.

1947 1950 1955

On 12 February Dior
presents his debut cou-
ture collection, which
is an instant success
dubbed the ‘New Look’
for its voluptuous silhou-
ette and luxurious fabrics.
Launch of the first Dior
perfume, Miss Dior.
1957
Designs a dress for Yves Mathieu- Christian Dior dies
Marlene Dietrich in Saint-Laurent
of a heart attack
Alfred Hitchcock’s joins Dior as a after choking on
Stage Fright and, design assistant.
a fishbone while
the following year, a The Grande on a rest cure at a
suit for Dietrich in No Boutique opens
spa in Montecatini,
Highway in the Sky. on Avenue Italy. Dior’s funeral
Montaigne and
in Paris is attended
Dior launches a by more than 2,500
cosmetics range. people. Yves Saint
Laurent is named
as Dior’s successor
and unveils his first
collection in Janu-
ary 1958.

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 BIBILIOGRAPHY

Esmerelda De Rethy, Jean-Louis Perreau, Chris-

tian Dior: The Glory Years, 1947-1957, Vendome
Press, 2002
Richard Martin, Harold Koda, Christian Dior,
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2000
Marie France Pochna, Christian Dior – The Man
who Made The World Look New, Little, Brown
and Company, 1997
Nigel Cawthorne, The New Look: Dior Revolu-
tion, Hamlyn, 1996
Terence Measham, Christian Dior: The Magic of
Fashion, Powerhouse Publishing, 1994
Diana De Marly, Christian Dior (Fashion Design-
ers), Holmes + Meier, 1990
Françoise Giroud, Dior: Christian Dior, 1905-
1957, Rizzoli International, 1987
Sacha Van Dorssen, Christian Dior, Editions du
Seuil, 1987

© Design Museum

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