Christian Dior

Early life and education

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 (1872-1946), head of his family's fertilizer and chemical firm Dior Frères, and his wife Madeleine Martin (1879-1931). In 1911, the family moved full-time to a new home in Paris, where Christian attended the Lycée Janson-de-Sailly, graduating in 1923. As his parents hoped he would become a diplomat, he enrolled at the Paris Institute of Political Studies but wasn't interested in his studies and dropped out in 1926.

Career

In 1928, with his friend Jacques Bonjean, and funding from his father, Dior opened an art gallery at 34 rue La Boétie, the Galerie Jacques Bonjean, which exhibited works by, among others, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Henri Matisse. During the Depression, Dior's father lost his business; with no funding, the gallery closed in 1931. One of the gallery's employees, Pierre Colle, had opened a gallery at nearby 29, rue Cambacérès; Dior joined him at Galerie Pierre Colle, where they became the dealers of Alexander Calder, Alberto Giacometti and Salvador Dali. At the end of 1933, the pair ran out of money and had to close the gallery. By now, Dior had contracted tuberculosis; he went to his family's smaller country home in Callian, where it took him a year to recover. While he was recovering, he started sketching fashion and sending the drawings to couture houses; his sketches were purchased by the House of Patou, the House of Worth, and Elsa Schiaparelli, Maggy Rouff, and Edward Molyneux. He was able to return to Paris, where he worked as a sketch artist for Le Figaro and Le Jardin des Modes.

In 1938, Dior was hired by Robert Piguet, who gave him the opportunity to design for three collections. It was Piguet who brought Dior into the world of haute couture, and Dior would later say: "Robert Piguet taught me that a garment is about fabric, colors, shapes, and the woman living inside it—and that fittings are what truly matter. He taught me the virtues of simplicity through which true elegance must come." With the outbreak of the war in 1939, Dior left Piguet to complete his compulsory military service, spending two years in the army's 47th Infantry Division. He returned to Occupied Paris, where he was hired by Lucien Lelong. As head of the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture, Lelong had skillfully convinced the Germans to allow the fashion houses to stay open, saving 28,000 jobs in the process. Like Piguet, Lelong did not design as much as supervise and mentor the designers who worked for him, and Dior spent the war learning from Lelong and working with Balmain and Hubert de Givenchy, among others. He also began designing costumes for films, beginning with Le lit à colonnes in 1942.

The House of Dior

In late 1946, Marcel Boussac, a textile manufacturer and one of the wealthiest men in France, invited Dior to help resurrect the house of Philippe et Gaston. Dior declined; he wanted his own house. Boussac agreed to finance it and gave Dior ten million francs, along with a business manager, Jacques Rouèt. Dior was guaranteed creative control and one-third of the profits. The house opened on 8 October 1946, on 30 Avenue Montaigne, with 85 staff members, seven models, and a salon decorated, by Victor Grandpierre and Christian Bérard, in black, white and gray. His head of millinery was also his muse, Mitzah Bricard. On 12 February 1947, the House of Dior presented its first collection, "Corolla", which was 90 garments displayed in ensembles. Dior's designs caused a sensation, in part because it was a time of austerity and he was presenting luxurious clothing in cambric-lined silk and satin. Dior explained: "We came from an epoch of war and uniforms, with women like soldiers with boxers' shoulders. I designed flower women, soft shoulders, full busts, waists as narrow as lianas and skirts as corollas." Harper's Bazaar editor Carmel Snow called it "The New Look", and the term came to apply to the style of Dior, and others, for the next five years.

The Corolla line was drawn from Edwardian era styles, with Dior refining and crystallizing trends in skirt shape and waistline that had been burgeoning since the 1930s. The house employed Pierre Cardin as head of tailoring for its first three years; it was he who designed one of the most popular Corolla ensembles, the "Bar Suit", which was purchased by buyers worldwide. Dior's fall 1947 collection, the Figure of Eight, continued with longer, more bell-shaped skirts, more bust emphasis, bulkier coats, and an alternate narrow silhouette with small shoulders and waists. To achieve the look, however, women needed a complicated selection of undergarments which, in itself, caused enough of a stir that Pathé News made a short film about it. Each season thereafter, Dior would feature a new "line": the Envol and Cloche lines in 1948, the Pockets and Blused lines in 1949, the Vertical and Oblique lines in 1950, the Oval and Long lines in 1951, the Sinueuse and Profilėe lines in 1952, the Tulipe and Vivante/Cupola lines in 1953, the Muguet/Lily of the Valley and H-Line of 1954, the A-Line and Y-Line in 1955, the Aimant/Magnet line in 1956, and the Libre/Free and Fuseau/Spindle lines of 1957.

Dior's 1954 H-line was met with controversy because it had the effect of binding the torso from the neckline to the hips, and flattened the bust. His intention was to give an impression of youth by freeing the waist and lifting the bust, but critics pronounced the silhouette "flat" and too similar to the flapper look of the late 1920s. The bust-binding would be fleeting, but the emphasis on youth and a less constrained waist would continue into the 1960s. The tension between heavily structured clothes and more relaxed, comfortable clothes characterized 1950s fashion, with Jacques Fath and Simonetta among those favoring heavy structure and Chanel and Balmain on the side of ease and comfort. The move toward ease could be seen in several of Dior's collections, and his spring 1952 Sinueuse line comprised soft blouses, cardigans, and skirts. All Dior collections from 1955 onward were less confining, although he, and almost all 1950s designers, presented hobbling sheath skirts throughout the decade.

Personal life and death

Dior's sister Catherine (1917–2008), a member of the French Resistance, was captured by the Gestapo and spent the war in concentration camps. In 1947, Dior named his debut fragrance, Miss Dior, in tribute to her. The story of Dior’s life during WWII and the following few years is featured in the mini-series The New Look.

At the other end of the spectrum, Dior's niece Françoise Dior, daughter of this brother Raymond, was dubbed a "true Nazi" and caused an uproar when, in Coventry in 1963, she married the British Neo-Nazi politician Colin Jordan.

Dior was known for being superstitious. Before making important decisions, he consulted his fortune-teller, Madame Delahaye, and his collections frequently featured talismanic symbols. He also carried a cluster of lucky charms with him, believing they brought him good fortune.

Christian Dior owned two homes. In Paris, he lived in a townhouse at 7, boulevard Jules-Sandeau. He also satisfied his long-standing obsession with architecture by buying and renovating the 19th-century Château de La Colle Noire in Montauroux; the chateau now belongs to Parfums Christian Dior.

While on vacation in Montecatini Terme, Italy, where he was recuperating from his second heart attack, Dior died of a third attack, on 24 October 1957. He was in the company of his lover, a 23 year-old singer named Jacques Benita, aka Tony Sandro. An estimated 9,000 people attended his funeral at the Église Saint-Honoré d'Eylau. It was a national event. He was buried on the grounds of the Château de la Colle Noire; as his coffin passed through cities and towns en route to his home, it was met with lines of women bearing flowers.

Awards and honors

In 1950, Dior was awarded the Légion d'honneur, France's highest civilian honor.

In 1947, he received the Neiman Marcus Award for his first collection. In 1956, he received the Parsons School of Design Distinguished Achievement Award. On March 4, 1957, Dior became the first fashion designer to be featured on the cover of Time.

In 1955, he was nominated for the 1955 Academy Award for Best Costume Design (Black and White) for the costumes designed for Jennifer Jones in the 1953 film Terminal Station.