Haute Couteur: Christian Dior

Christian Dior (21 January 1905, Granville, Manche – 23 October 1957, Montecatini), was an influential French fashion designer, best known as the founder of one of the world's top fashion houses, also called Christian Dior.

Christian Dior was born in Granville, a seaside town on the coast of France, the second of the five children of Maurice Dior, a wealthy fertilizer manufacturer (the family firm was Dior Frères), and his wife, the former Madeleine Martin. He had four siblings: Raymond (father of Françoise Dior), Jacqueline, Bernard, and Ginette (aka Catherine).

Chirstian's family had hopes he would become a diplomat, but Dior was artistic and wished to be involved in fashion. To make money, he sold his fashion sketches outside his house for about 10 cents each. In 1928 after leaving school he received money from his father to finance a small art gallery, where he and a friend sold art by the likes of Pablo Picasso.

After a financial disaster that resulted in his father losing control of Dior Frères, Christian Dior was forced to close the gallery. From the 1930s to the 1940s he worked with fashion designer Robert Piguet until being called up for military service. In 1942, having left the Army, Dior joined the fashion house of Lucien Lelong, where he and Pierre Balmain were the primary designers. For the duration of World War II, Christian Dior, as an employee of Lelong—who labored to preserve the French fashion industry during wartime for economic and artistic reasons—dressed the wives of the 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. While her brother dressed Nazi wives, Dior's sister Catherine (1917—2008) served as a member of the French Resistance, was captured by the Gestapo, and sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp; she was liberated in May 1945.

On 16 December 1946 Dior founded his fashion house, backed by Marcel Boussac, a cotton-fabric magnate. The actual name of the line of his first collection, presented in early 1947, was Corolle (literally the botanical term corolla or circlet of flower petals in English), but the phrase New Look was coined for it by Carmel Snow, the editor-in-chief of Harper's Bazaar. Dior's designs were more voluptuous than the boxy, fabric-conserving shapes of the recent World War II styles, influenced by the rations on fabric. He was a master at creating shapes and silhouettes; Dior is quoted as saying "I have designed flower women." His look employed fabrics lined predominantly with percale, boned, bustier-style bodices, hip padding, wasp-waisted corsets and petticoats that made his dresses flare out from the waist, giving his models a very curvaceous form.

Initially, women protested because his designs covered up their legs, which they had been unused to because of the previous limitations on fabric. There was also some backlash to Dior's designs form due to the amount of fabrics used in a single dress or suit. During one photo shoot in a Paris market, the models were attacked by female vendors over this profligacy, but opposition ceased as the wartime shortages ended. The "New Look" (a name given it by American fashion-magazine editor Carmel Snow) revolutionized women's dress and reestablished Paris as the center of the fashion world after World War II.

Death
Dior died while on holiday in Montecatini, Italy on October 23, 1957. Some reports say that he died of a heart attack after choking on a fish bone. Time magazine's obituary stated that he died of a heart attack after playing a game of cards. However, the Paris socialite and Dior acquaintance Alexis von Rosenberg, Baron de Rédé stated in his memoirs that contemporary rumor had it that the fashion designer succumbed to a heart attack after a strenuous sexual encounter. Some even think that he died because of a seizure. To this day, no one knows for sure.

Tributes
The Paul Gallico novella Mrs 'Arris Goes to Paris (1958, UK title Flowers for Mrs Harris) tells the story of a London charlady who falls in love with her employer's couture wardrobe and decides to go to Paris to purchase herself a Dior ballgown.

A perfume named Christian Dior is used in Haruki Murakami's novel The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle as an influential symbol placed at critical plot points throughout.

The English singer-songwriter Morrissey released a song titled "Christian Dior" as a b-side to his 2006 single "In the Future When All's Well".