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][dead link]
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
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 2022 dollars [5]). In 1928, he 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.[citation needed] 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 Piguet.[7] From 1937, Dior was employed by fashion designer Piguet, who gave him the opportunity to design for three collections.[8][9] Dior later said 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), 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, Dior named his debut fragrance Miss Dior in tribute to her.[citation needed]
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.[1] 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] and made 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 was 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, 19-year-old Yves Saint Laurent became Dior's design assistant. Dior told Saint Laurent's mother in 1957 that he had chosen Saint Laurent to succeed him at Dior. She indicated later that she was 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]
^ abMarly, Diana de (1990). Christian Dior. London: B.T. Batsford. p. 12. ISBN978-0-7134-6453-5. Dior designed three collections while at Piguet's, and the most famous dress he created then was the Cafe Anglais
^Jayne Sheridan, Fashion, Media, Promotion: The New Black Magic (John Wiley & Sons, 2010), p. 44.
^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).
^Mulvagh, Jane (1988). "1946-1956". Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion. London, England: Viking, the Penguin Group. pp. 180–181. ISBN0-670-80172-0. 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
^Mulvagh, Jane (1988). "1947". Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion. London, England: Viking, the Penguin Group. p. 194. ISBN0-670-80172-0. [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.
^Cunningham, Bill (1 March 1988). "Fashionating Rhythm". Details. New York, NY: Details Publishing Corp. VI (8): 121. ISSN0740-4921. 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.
^"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...
^"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.
^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.
^Howell, Georgina (1978). "1948-1959". In Vogue: Sixty Years of Celebrities and Fashion from British Vogue. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books Ltd. p. 204. ISBN0-14-004955-X. Women obeyed Paris because of Christian Dior.
^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. ISBN0-14-004955-X. page range covering mention of Dior line names
^Mulvagh, Jane (1988). "1946-1956". Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion. London, England: Viking, The Penguin Group. pp. 194–248. ISBN0-670-80172-0. page range covering mention of Dior line names
^Howell, Georgina (1978). "1958". In Vogue: Sixty Years of Celebrities and Fashion from British Vogue. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books Ltd. p. 246. ISBN0-14-004955-X.
^Mulvagh, Jane (1988). "1958". Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion. London, England: Viking, The Penguin Group. pp. 251–252. ISBN0-670-80172-0.
^"Christian Dior". British Vogue. 5 April 2012. Retrieved 4 June 2020.
