Christian Dior is a French label and it's designer was actually Christian Dior himself instead of John Galliano, as many of you know it now. He was born in 1905 and passed away in 1957. In his time, he was also considered as an influential French fashion designer.
He attended Ecole des Sciences Politiques from 1920 to 1925 against his own wishes and his parents actually wanted him to become a diplomat. In 1928, he opened his own art gallery but shut it down due to a family disaster. He got involved in designing in the 1930s when he did sketches for haute couture houses.
His luck changed in 1945 when he designed for Marcel Boussac who made a fortune from fabrics. Marcel Boussac was interested in his new idea that involved using lots of layers of extravagant fabrics. Dior's very first collection, Corolle Line, premiered in 1947. He then established his main fashion house, Christian Dior New York Inc. in 1949.
Corolle Line was actually first presented in February 12. The look was refreshing pens and much more voluptuous than the boxy shapes of the recent World War 2 styles. 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.
The hem of the skirt was very flattering on the calves and ankles, giving a beautiful silhouette. At first, there was some backlash to Dior's genius form because of the amount of fabrics used in a single dress or suit, but as soon as the War Time Shortages came to an end, opposition ceased. His designs represented consistent classic elegance, stressing the feminine look.
Because of that, he revolutionised women's dresses and reestablished Paris as the center of the fashion world. Throughout the 1950s, Christian Dior was the biggest and best-run haute couture house in Paris. One of his closest rivals was the enigmatic Spanish designer, Cristobal Balenciaga.
As the most prestigious Paris couture house, Christian 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 business. 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 collection. 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 epitomises 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 including all his staff and famous clients led by the Duchess of Windsor.
A fortnight after the burial of Dior, 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 exquisite fabrics, but their young designer made them softer, lighter and easier to wear.
Yves Saint Laurent was conscripted in the army and, after demobilisation, opened his own couture house. He was replaced at Dior by Marc Bohan, who instilled his conservative style on the collections until 1988 when Italian Gianfranco Ferre took over as head designer until 1995. In 1996, John Galliano, was appointed chief designer of Christian Dior by the company’s new owner, the LVMH luxury goods group.
For more information and what are the latest trends Christian Dior has to offer, you may want to visit the Dior webpage: www.dior.com
Mr. Designer
5:18 AM
