Vogue on Christian Dior

155 Pages·2015·7.09 MB·English

by  Dior

Dior’s monochromatic Mexique dress from 1951. Photograph Henry Clarke.

A René Bouché sketch of Dior’s 1949 cocktail dress with sweeping floor sash.
Dior photographed by Henry Clarke for Vogue with his favorite model, Renée,
in 1957.
Contents
FORTUNE’S FAVOR
NEW LOOK
CHANGING SEASONS
COMPLETELY DIOR
DIOR’S LEGACY
Index of Searchable Terms
References
Picture credits
Acknowledgments
“OF COURSE FASHION IS A TRANSIENT,
EGOTISTICAL INDULGENCE, YET IN AN
ERA AS SOMBRE AS OURS, LUXURY MUST
BE DEFENDED CENTIMETRE BY
CENTIMETRE.”
CHRISTIAN DIOR
FORTUNE’S FAVOR
A
I
F YOU CONJURED AN IMAGE of a fashion designer in your mind, you might not
settle on one who looked like Christian Dior. A man “with an air of baby
plumpness still about him and an almost desperate shyness augmented by a
receding chin” as American Vogue’s Bettina Ballard recalled in 1946. Or the
“plump, balding bachelor of fifty-two whose pink cheeks might have been
sculpted from marzipan,” as described by Time reporter Stanley Karnow in
1957. The same sugary confection found its way into the great photographer
Cecil Beaton’s account of Dior: “a bland country curate made out of pink
marzipan.” Not that Christian Dior was unaware of the shortfall in his
appearance. He wrote, “I could not help thinking that I cut a sorry figure – a
well-fed gentleman in the Parisian’s favourite neutral-coloured suit – compared
with the glamour, not to say dandified or effeminate couturier of popular
imagination.” Dior was a man who knew what a legend should look like.
Photographed for Vogue on February 12, 1947—the day his New Look was
launched upon the world—Dior is pictured dressed in sepulchral black,
markedly glum, giving credence to his description in Life magazine as “a French
Undertaker.” In the photograph the designer looks anything but legendary,
anxiety writ large in the downturn of his mouth, in his distracted, sidelong gaze.
But in fashion as in life, appearances can be deceptive. In every way that his
looks were unmemorable and self-effacing, his fashions were not. Even his
couture was a kind of trick, the lightest substance crafted upon the steeliest
foundation. Surprise was one of Dior’s chief weapons and delights; he was an
haute couturier whose clothes made all the fuss and fireworks that he—demure
but utterly determined—tried to avoid.
Few designers in the history of fashion can be said to have changed the world
in any way. But Christian Dior could faithfully make a claim to it. In only ten
years at the house that bore his name, Dior revived Paris couture, bestowed a
new business model upon fashion, and altered the visual language, so that his
vision of how women should dress—Dior’s taste and ideals—became the
accepted notion of fashion. It was the confidence with which he unleashed his
ideas, the determination of his silhouettes, the sheer bravura of his vision—that
this and nothing else was the look of the season—that secured his legacy.
On the eve of his February 1947 debut, Clifford Coffin photographs the new
haute couturier, Christian Dior.
So too did his charm, his popularity, his keen embrace of publicity, and his
construction of a public character that could be the mouthpiece for Maison
Christian Dior. This personality—the well-bred, avuncular couturier who called
his fiercely loyal staff “mes enfants,” and whose rigorously high standards, in
everything from food to flou, were built on a solid foundation of kindness and
humanity—was arguably just as fundamental to the success of the house of Dior
as his winning designs.
Equally, Dior’s keen commercial sense—rare in a designer—creating licenses
for the Dior name to be carried on everything from perfume to hosiery, ensured
that everyone could buy into the Dior dream. Thus he dextrously balanced his
work in the high-altitude world of couture with his ready-to-wear operations
without debasing either sphere. By the time of his death in 1957, exactly ten
years after his debut collection, Ballard wrote, “The magic name of Dior stands
for fashion to the masses. It is part of the taxi driver’s vocabulary, the teenager’s,
and it is often the only name that rings a fashion bell in the mind of the average
man.”
And Vogue was there through it all, from New Look to “H” line, from
corsetry to chemise. Front row in the pearl-gray salon of 30 Avenue Montaigne,
Vogue bore witness to Dior’s developments of silhouette, reporting back from
the crush and chaos of his twice-yearly collections, feeding an audience anxious
to perceive Dior’s new direction: the shape of things to come.
“I envisaged my house … would be aimed at a
clientele of really elegant women.”
CHRISTIAN DIOR