\t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tChristian Dior French couturier, born in Normandy with one of his own designs, a satin evening gown called Blenheim.<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Getty Images<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tBut his leap to the forefront of global fashion was not a given. He was born in 1905 in Granville, a provincial coastal town in the Normandy region of France, to an industrialist father, Maurice, and a housewife mother, Madeleine Martine.<\/p>\n \n\tMaurice Dior and family members ran a group of chemical companies, which landed the Dior name on such products as fertilizers.<\/p>\n \n\tDior\u2019s mother, transfixed by the refined traditions of the bourgeoisie, was known for her elegant outfits and dedication to a beautiful lifestyle, reflected in her furniture, interior decoration and flowers. That affected her five children, notably Christian, who loved gardening and fancy parties, and designed costumes for local events and carnivals. But he was frequently described as a moody, taciturn child, prone to solitude.<\/p>\n \n\tThe family moved to Paris in time for Dior\u2019s higher education, and his parents initially envisioned a diplomatic career for their son upon his graduation from the Institute of Political Sciences. But Dior\u2019s interests were artistic, principally architecture, music, drawing and painting.<\/p>\n \n\tHe opened a gallery in 1928 with an antique dealer friend, working with avant-garde artists such as Salvador Dal\u00ed, Alberto Giacometti, Pablo Picasso and Man Ray.<\/p>\n \n\tAfter his family lost its fortune in the Great Depression, Dior learned fashion drawing and started selling designs to magazines and couturiers including Jean Patou, Nina Ricci, Maggy Rouff and Balenciaga.<\/p>\n \n\tIn 1938, he was hired by Robert Piguet as a draftsman, playing a role in the romantic fashions that dominated until World War II. Dior\u2019s career was interrupted by the conflict, during which he served as a private first class in the engineering corps. He returned to Paris in 1941 and joined Lucien Lelong, then a leading French fashion house, where he worked with Pierre Balmain.<\/p>\n \n\tIn his biography, \u201cChristian Dior and I,\u201d the designer recalled that he enjoyed his work at Lelong immensely. \u201cI had neither the responsibility of putting my designs into production nor that of selling them,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n \n\tThen came a chance encounter with a childhood friend and a director of the house of Philippe & Gaston, a dressmaker owned by Marcel Boussac, the French textile mogul known as the cotton king, who was looking for a designer to infuse new life into the business.<\/p>\n \n\tInitially stumped for suggestions, Dior ultimately proposed himself as a potential candidate. That was, until he inspected the business from top to bottom and decided Boussac would be wasting his time trying to restore Philippe & Gaston to its former heights.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cSo many others before me had tried to resurrect once-famous names without success; the existence of a dressmaking house is burdened with uncertainties, and its lifespan is often far shorter than the men who run it,\u201d Dior wrote. \u201cI decided that I was not meant by nature to revive the dead.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tUltimately, Dior found himself suggesting the creation of his own house, new from top to bottom, and built on the principles of luxury and craftsmanship \u2014 a proposition that piqued Boussac\u2019s interest. \u201cAfter the prolonged stagnation of the war years, I believed there was a genuine unsatisfied desire throughout the world for something new in fashion,\u201d Dior wrote.<\/p>\n \n\tDior was deeply superstitious. Before he accepted Boussac\u2019s offer, he consulted his mystic, Madame Delahaye, who urged him to accept. But her endorsement wasn\u2019t enough. Through Raymonde Zehnacker, his mentor at Lelong who would remain a lifelong friend, Dior got an appointment to see Grandma, another mystic. She is said to have shrieked, \u201cThis house will revolutionize fashion.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tLater that same evening, in March 1946, while walking down the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honor\u00e9, Dior stumbled over something. It was a metal star with a hole in the middle. He took it as a sign. The next day he marched into Boussac\u2019s office and the two were in business.<\/p>\n \n\tBoussac ponied up $500,000 to launch the brand and Dior took up residence at 28 Avenue Montaigne, which was being vacated by a hat shop.<\/p>\n \n\tSeeking to relieve women from wartime frugality and shapeless clothes, Dior devised ways to enhance feminine beauty. His proposition was greeted with rapturous applause and immediately embraced by such disparate women as singer Juliette Greco and stage actress Dominique Blanchard, who had a long skirt made of 80 yards of pleated white faille.<\/p>\n \n\tCarmel Snow, the editor of Harper\u2019s Bazaar, baptized Dior\u2019s first collection \u201cNew Look,\u201d and it precipitated a stampede back to Paris for fashion \u2014 and, as noted, outcry in the city\u2019s streets over what many, still struggling after the war, considered an extravagant use of precious cloth.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tFrench fashion designer Christian Dior sits in a chair with a sketchpad, on which is a fashion design, for a broadcast of the CBS celebrity interview program \u2018Person to Person,\u2019 November 7, 1955.<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCBS\/Courtesy of Getty Images<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tThe business quickly expanded to neighboring buildings, the one at 30 Avenue Montaigne housing what in the early \u201950s was the biggest luxury boutique in Paris. Many of the founder\u2019s decorating codes \u2014 medallions, ribbons, cane work, houndstooth and panther prints \u2014 remain today.<\/p>\n \n\tHe was the only Paris couturier to maintain significant licenses in foreign countries, acquiring 41 of them during his time at the house. He had operations in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, England and even Syria, to name a few. Besides his couture and ready-to-wear, he also created gloves, jewelry and men\u2019s ties.<\/p>\n \n\tDespite a gentle and shy nature, Dior was a natural provocateur, whose drastic changes in silhouette often invoked controversy, outrage and numerous headlines, fanning his notoriety. \u201cGossip, even malicious rumors, are worth more than the most expensive publicity campaign in the world,\u201d he figured.<\/p>\n \n\tHis designs were widely copied, down to mass-produced housedresses, and were the guiding light for millions of women worldwide. After the New Look brought hemlines to the ankle, protests broke out in many of the places Dior traveled, including America.<\/p>\n \n\tIn Paris, market women tried to attack models wearing lavish Dior dresses while they were being photographed. \u201cI never guessed what an explosive quality my modest formula would prove to have in an age of compromise and laissez-faire,\u201d the designer said. \u201cI designed flower women \u2014 soft shoulders, full busts, waists as narrow lines and skirts as corollas.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tHis famous customers included the Duchess of Windsor, Gloria Swanson, Marlene Dietrich and Zsa Zsa Gabor, and among his intimate social circle were artists Jean Cocteau, Sir Francis Rose and Christian B\u00e9rard, and composers Darius Milhaud and Francis Poulenc.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tFrench fashion designer Christian Dior standing in a showroom with samples of his design accessories for women, including hats, hat pins, gloves, muffs, lingerie, hosiery, evening bags, and jewelry.<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Getty Images<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tDior was known for his impeccable taste. An invitation to his home was a coveted social coup. A famous gourmet, he would lay out lavish feasts while visitors marveled at the surroundings. Dior asked his interior decorator friends, including Victor Grandpierre and Georges Geffroy, to decorate his homes and boutiques.<\/p>\n \n\tThe American market was a key priority, so Dior boarded the Queen Elizabeth, setting sail with Vogue\u2019s Alexander Liberman. Upon winning the prestigious Neiman Marcus Award in Dallas in 1947, he toured Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and Chicago, where he had a brush with angry women brandishing \u201cDown With the New Look\u201d placards.<\/p>\n \n\tDior\u2019s willingness to adapt his look to international markets was an innovation and is a key part of his legacy. \u201cThanks to both the encouragement and criticism of the buyers from abroad, I was soon designing prints for California and cottons for Rio de Janeiro in an effort to give women of different climates and different ways of life the clothes they wanted,\u201d he wrote in his memoirs.<\/p>\n \n\tIn 1948, the brand established a shop on Fifth Avenue in New York.<\/p>\n \n\tDress manufacturers, on and off Seventh Avenue, bought dresses, the rights to reproduce designs or patterns from Dior. But there were also plenty of pirates who copied adaptations off the rack and produced them, or syndicates that rented copies to dressmakers. That meant original Dior dresses that would cost $2,000 in Paris could be copied at $7 or less.<\/p>\n \n\tDesigns were closely guarded secrets and a threat of jail hung over employees if they leaked information about the next collection. The company was vigilant in tracking down and prosecuting copyists, averaging some 40 lawsuits a year.<\/p>\n \n\tDior didn\u2019t reap huge profits on the sale of individual models. In 1953, WWD, in a series of articles devoted to the house\u2019s innovative business practices, pegged the margin at less than 10 percent. Dior himself elucidated his expenses in a talk with graduate students. He said that, assuming the average cost of a garment was $360, he cleared only around $30, after paying for materials, labor, social insurance, taxes and saleswomen\u2019s commissions and overhead.<\/p>\n \n\tBut international expansion remained brisk. Some assumed Dior, with his growing empire, would loosen his creative grip. But he refused to enter any venture in which he couldn\u2019t wield creative influence and control distribution.<\/p>\n \n\tIn 1950, Dior received the French Legion of Honor award for his role in the fashion and textile industry and presented a collection in London to Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret.<\/p>\n \n\tAs his responsibilities grew, he remained constant in his unwavering dedication to his craft. Before every collection, he would isolate himself for three weeks to a month and emerge with as many as 500 sketches for the new collection.<\/p>\n \n\tDior had his critics. Some found his ribbed and wired creations overly complex, rigid and as unwearable as architecture. His H-line, or flat line, was controversial, as was his switch to the A-line, which some lamented for wiping out curves. In the mid-\u201950s, he once remarked upon the unsightliness of women\u2019s knees and was \u201ccastigated on the front pages of five continents,\u201d according to Collier\u2019s.<\/p>\n \n\tDior\u2019s career encompassed only 22 collections, but the ideas behind the New Look\u2019s body-enhancing structure reverberated for years.<\/p>\n \n\tThe pressure of leading fashion did not escape him, and his tension was said to be palpable through the thick carpets at Avenue Montaigne. He considered his creative work nerve-racking, although at home in his bath he could churn out 100 sketches until he was as wrinkled as a prune.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cTo manufacture emotion, a man must have a working agreement with madness,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \n\tPierre Berg\u00e9 recalled that Dior often instructed his chauffeur to continue circling the company\u2019s headquarters in the black Citro\u00ebn until he mustered the courage to enter. Faced with imperfections, Dior could go into a rage, poking imperfect stitches with a long stick. Withdrawn and introverted as an adult, he was said to prefer solitaire to canasta. He was also said to continue to be deeply superstitious, pessimistic and prone to consulting mediums for assurance.<\/p>\n \n\tBy 1957, his global reputation was such that he was featured on the cover of Time magazine. The designer typically sought rest and relaxation after each collection, and in October of that year, he headed for a favorite Italian spa town, Montecatini, reportedly to lose some weight. He fell ill after dinner one night and ultimately suffered heart failure.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tFrench fashion designer Christian Dior amid some dummies in his atelier. Paris, 1940s<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMondadori via Getty Images<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\t\u201cHis death was completely out of the blue,\u201d said Jeanne Doutreleau, aka Victoire, one of Dior\u2019s star models. Doutreleau was with Yves Saint Laurent at the Dior headquarters when she heard the news. \u201cIt was a big shock for [Saint Laurent], with the house suddenly heralding him Dior\u2019s successor, and I remember suddenly feeling very orphaned, like the end of an era had come about,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \n\tDior\u2019s funeral at the Chapelle Saint Honor\u00e9 d\u2019Eylau was so packed that it took more than an hour for the congregation to pass his bier and to pay respects to family members and Dior executives. \u201cDior\u2019s passing ends a brilliant career that gave the French couture and the world garment industries an impetus rarely, if ever, known before,\u201d Balmain said in tribute.<\/p>\n \n\tWith his inaugural Trap\u00e8ze line in 1958, Saint Laurent pushed the house in a new direction. Over the years, the couturier\u2019s successors would include Marc Bohan, Gianfranco Ferr\u00e9, John Galliano, Raf Simons and Maria Grazia Chiuri, who in 2016 became the first female creative director in the history of the house.<\/p>\n \n\tA Timeline for Christian Dior<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\t1905: Christian Dior is born in the French seaside town of Granville to an affluent family of agricultural industrialists.<\/p>\n \n\t1919: Dior meets a fortune-teller, who says he will find success through women.<\/p>\n \n\t1923: Dior enters a prestigious political science university in Paris.<\/p>\n \n\t1932: Dior and Pierre Colle open a gallery on Rue Cambac\u00e9r\u00e8s on the Right Bank in Paris, where they later display Surrealist works by Salvador Dal\u00ed, Alberto Giacometti, Pablo Picasso and Man Ray.<\/p>\n \n\t1934: Struck with tuberculosis, Dior retreats to the Pyrenees mountains and decides to turn to fashion.<\/p>\n \n\t1935: Dior does illustrations for the daily Le Figaro and fashion magazine Le Jardin des Modes and begins to sell drawings to couture houses including Jean Patou, Nina Ricci, Maggy Rouff and Balenciaga.<\/p>\n \n\t1938: Dior is hired by couturier Robert Piguet, where he creates the Caf\u00e9 Anglais dress.<\/p>\n \n\t1941: Dior becomes a designer for Lucien Lelong, where he plays with pencil skirts and rounded pleats.<\/p>\n \n\t1946: Supported by industrialist Marcel Boussac, Christian Dior establishes the Christian Dior Couture house and opens workshops at 30 Avenue Montaigne, employing 85 people.<\/p>\n \n\t1947: Dior presents his first collection under his own name. Winning the Neiman Marcus \u201cfashion Oscar\u201d in Dallas, he tours Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and New York.<\/p>\n \n\t1948: Christian Dior establishes a shop on Fifth Avenue in New York.<\/p>\n \n\t1950: Dior receives the French Legion of Honor award for his role in the fashion and textile industry and presents a collection in London to Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret.<\/p>\n \n\tMarlene Dietrich wears a Christian Dior wardrobe in Alfred Hitchcock\u2019s movie \u201cStage Fright.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t1951: Staff levels at Christian Dior swell to around 900 people.<\/p>\n \n\t1953: Christian Dior opens a store in Caracas, Venezuela, and travels in South and Central America.<\/p>\n \n\t1955: Yves Saint Laurent becomes Dior\u2019s design assistant.<\/p>\n \n\tThe house opens a Victor Grandpierre-decorated boutique on the corner of Avenue Montaigne and Rue Fran\u00e7ois I-er in Paris.<\/p>\n \n\t1957:\u00a0 Dior appears on the cover of Time magazine. The designer dies of a heart attack in Montecatini Terme, Italy.<\/p>\n \n\tYves Saint Laurent becomes creative director of the fashion house.<\/p>\n \n\t1958: The Trap\u00e8ze line of Yves Saint Laurent\u2019s first collection marks a shift for the house. Roger Vivier launches a shoe brand under the Dior label.<\/p>\n \n\t1960: Marc Bohan becomes creative director of Christian Dior and later introduces the Slim Look.<\/p>\n \n\t1967: Philippe Guibourg\u00e9 creates the Miss Dior ready-to-wear line.<\/p>\n \n\tPrincess Grace of Monaco inaugurates the Baby Dior boutique at 28 Avenue Montaigne.<\/p>\n \n\t1970: Marc Bohan creates Christian Dior Monsieur.<\/p>\n \n\t1983: Marc Bohan wins the Golden Thimble for his spring haute couture collection.<\/p>\n \n\tDominique Morlotti becomes creative director of Christian Dior Monsieur.<\/p>\n \n\tBernard Arnault buys the Financi\u00e8re Agache group, owner of Christian Dior Couture.<\/p>\n \n\t1985: Bernard Arnault becomes chief executive officer of Christian Dior Couture.<\/p>\n \n\t1987: Fran\u00e7ois Mitterrand inaugurates a retrospective exhibit at the Mus\u00e9e des Arts D\u00e9coratifs for the house\u2019s 40th anniversary.<\/p>\n \n\t1989: Italian couturier Gianfranco Ferr\u00e9 becomes the designer for Christian Dior and wins the Golden Thimble for his first fall haute couture collection.<\/p>\n \n\tBernard Arnault takes over the LVMH group, owner of Parfums Christian Dior, bringing couture and perfumery back under the same roof.<\/p>\n \n\t1992: Patrick Lavoix becomes creative director of Christian Dior Monsieur.<\/p>\n \n\t1995: Bernadette Chirac presents Diana, Princess of Wales, with a brand new Dior bag named Lady Dior.<\/p>\n \n\t1996: John Galliano succeeds Gianfranco Ferr\u00e9 as designer for Christian Dior.<\/p>\n \n\tThe Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York celebrates the 50th anniversary of the house of Dior with an exhibit. At the Met Gala, Lady Diana wears the first Dior dress designed by Galliano.<\/p>\n \n\t1997: John Galliano presents his first haute couture collection for Dior. Nicole Kidman wears a dress from his collection at the Oscar ceremony.<\/p>\n \n\tThe Christian Dior museum opens in Christian Dior\u2019s family home, the Villa Les Rhumbs in Granville.<\/p>\n \n\t1998: Dior Joaillerie is founded with Victoire de Castellane as creative director.<\/p>\n \n\t2000: Hedi Slimane becomes creative director of Christian Dior Monsieur and changes its name to Dior Homme.<\/p>\n \n\t2007: Kris Van Assche becomes creative director of Dior Homme.<\/p>\n \n\t2011: Bill Gaytten becomes the designer for Christian Dior.<\/p>\n \n\t2012: Raf Simons is appointed creative director of womenswear for Christian Dior and presents his first haute couture collection.<\/p>\n \n\t2013: The Museum of Contemporary Art stages an exhibit called \u201cThe Dior Spirit\u201d in Shanghai with over a hundred pieces from 1947 to 2013.<\/p>\n \n\t2016: Maria Grazia Chiuri becomes Dior\u2019s first female creative director.<\/p>\n \n\t2017: The House of Dior celebrates its 70th anniversary with major exhibits in Paris and Granville, France; Melbourne, Australia; and Toronto, Canada.<\/p>\n \n\t2018: Kim Jones becomes artistic director of menswear at Dior.<\/p>\n \n\t2022: Dior reopens its historic flagship at 30 Avenue Montaigne after two years of renovations with a restaurant, a pastry caf\u00e9, an exhibition space, couture ateliers, a high jewelry workshop and a private apartment.<\/p>\n \n\t\u2013 With contributions from WWD staff.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The birth of the house of Dior is the focus of the new Apple TV+ period drama \u201cThe New Look,\u201d which focuses on how Christian Dior and his contemporaries navigated the horrors of World War II and resuscitated French haute couture. \u201cMonsieur Christian Dior, the stout and startled-looking grand vizier of the high-fashion Paris dressmakers, is the main reason most women look the way they do today,\u201d Collier\u2019s Weekly reported in 1955, eight years after the couturier set the fashion world spinning with his waist-cinching, fan-skirted New Look dresses. Within years of founding his house in 1947, Dior had become the locomotive of the French fashion industry, his designs spawning an empire that set the template for the modern fashion business, replete with such innovations as licensing, accessible products like stockings and fragrances, and collections tailored to certain markets. By 1953, the business grossed a whopping $15 million annually, employed 1,500 people and accounted for 55 percent of all Paris couture exports. Today, the brand is a jewel in the crown of luxury magnate Bernard Arnault, the founder of LVMH Mo\u00ebt Hennessy Louis Vuitton, who has owned Dior since 1984. Though LVMH does not break down revenues by brand, Bernstein analyst Luca Solca estimates that Dior brings in annual revenues of 15 billion euros from fashion and beauty, making it one of the world\u2019s most powerful luxury brands. Although his trajectory was cut short with his death in 1957, Dior cut a wide swath in fashion history, thanks to memorable designs that glorified female beauty and invoked desire around the world. For him, fashion was feeling. \u201cIt cannot be reasoned,\u201d he once said. Christian Dior French couturier, born in Normandy with one of his own designs, a satin evening gown called Blenheim. Courtesy of Getty Images But his leap to the forefront of global fashion was not a given. He was born in 1905 in Granville, a provincial coastal town in the Normandy region of France, to an industrialist…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":964,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/963"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Christian](\"https:\/\/wwd.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/GettyImages-2643421.jpg?w=208\")
<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>![\"French](\"https:\/\/wwd.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/GettyImages-73319085.jpg?w=300\")
<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>![\"French](\"https:\/\/wwd.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/GettyImages-3244912.jpg?w=238\")
<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>![\"French](\"https:\/\/wwd.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/GettyImages-141551412.jpg?w=233\")
<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>