Dior in England
In the spinning merrygoround of Paris Fashion Week the name Christian Dior remains as powerfully French as the founder of the brand himself. True, until last week it had a British creative director in John Galliano, but its headquarters in avenue Montaigne are still a triumphant Parisian monument, 65 years after Dior reasserted the dominance of the capital's couture industry following the Second World War. 'Dior saved Paris as Paris was saved in the Battle of Marne,' declared Carmel Snow, the editor of, whose appreciation of Christian Dior's debut on 12 February 1947 'Your dresses have such a new look' provided a christening name for his collection. 'To cheer myself up I went ordered a suit at Dior,' she wrote to her sister Diana Mosley, on 19 February. 'The skirt has sort of stays at which one tugs until giddiness intervenes the basque of the coat stuck out with whalebone Terribly pretty. I shall have the coat copied in white linen so that I can wear it the whole summer' Despite the discomfort of the corsets, Mitford was equally enthusiastic about Dior's subsequent collection, as was evident in a letter to her mother on 3 September 1947: 'Went to Dior yesterday the winter coats to the ankle are the prettiest I ever saw, I think I shall sell my fur coat get one You can't imagine the yards yards of stuff they manage to cram in.'
Not everyone approved of the extravagant use of fabric in an era of postwar austerity; the New Look provoked outrage on the streets of Paris (in one incident, a model had her Dior outfit torn apart by housewives still suffering from wartime deprivations). In London the President of the Board of Trade, Sir Stafford Cripps, was equally appalled by what he deemed a profligate waste of materials while rationing remained in force.
Such censure did nothing to dampen demand for the New Look, for Maison Dior seemed to represent the most romanticised ideal of French elegance. Bettina Ballard, afashion editor, reported on the multitude of 'spectators who came to see the famous couture house as they would go to see the Eiffel Tower'; while Cecil Beaton observed that Dior was held in 'reverence', and 'treated as the national asset which he undoubtedly is'. It was Beaton, too, who described Dior as 'like a bland country curate made of pink marzipan modest as a sugar violet in spite of the eulogies that have been heaped upon him. His egglike head may sway from side to side, but it will never be turned by success though when he arrived in New York he received as much newspaper space as Winston Churchill.'
Less widely reported, however, was the relationship between Dior and the British; which nevertheless provides important clues to the evolution of this apparently quintessentially French couturier. Born in January 1905, the second son of a successful businessman,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], Dior spent his childhood in Granville, a Normandy seaside resort overlooking the English Channel. The family villa, Les Rhumbs, had a landscaped 'English garden', as was fashionable at the time, and although the house was 'perfectly hideous', as Dior recalled in his 1956 autobiography, 'like all AngloNorman buildings at the end of the last century I look back on it with tenderness as well as amazement. In a certain sense, my whole way of life was influenced by its architecture and environment.'
According to Dior's biographer, MarieFrance Pochna, his mother, Madeleine (who had no idea that he was gay), hoped he might marry an English girl, the daughter of a British Army colonel who had retired with his family to Granville. Instead, a rather different manifestation of Dior's fondness for the British became apparent on his sojourn in London in 1926, where he learnt to speak English and discovered an unexpected appetite for the local cuisine. 'I love English traditions, English politeness, English architecture, I even love English cooking!' he enthused in his memoir. 'I dote on Yorkshire pudding, mince pies, stuffed chicken, and above all worship the English breakfast of tea, porridge, eggs and bacon.'
Dior was just 21 on his first expedition to England, and was to remember it as an idyllic episode of freedom,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], before his conscription into French military service. 'I felt far enough from my family to be independent and at the same time near enough to them to summon their aid, if need be.' As it was, the Dior family began unravelling: in 1930 his younger brother Bernard became mentally ill or, as Christian described it, 'was struck down with an incurable nervous disease, and my mother, whom I adored, suddenly faded away and died of grief'. Soon afterwards his father lost his fortune in the crashing stock markets, and Christian's own business a modern art gallery went bust.
It was French fashion that was to prove his way out of financial ruin first as an illustrator,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], then as a designer for Robert Piguet but his affection for English style gave him his earliest success in couture. In the summer of 1938 Dior came up with a muchadmired hound'stooth dress for the Piguet collection, which he named Caf Anglais. 'I really began to think I had arrived,' he wrote. 'What had in fact arrived even more surely than I had was the fatal year of 1939.'
Dior spent the first part of the war serving in the French army; and then, after the surrender to the Germans, joined his father and sister in the unoccupied zone of southern France, where he grew vegetables on a Provenal smallholding. At the end of 1941 he returned to occupied Paris, working for the couturier Lucien Lelong. But it was under his own name that Christian Dior creations conquered London, as well as Paris and New York (albeit with financial backing from Marcel Boussac,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], who had made a fortune in textile manufacturing, the 'Cotton King' with a vested interest in designs that called for a great quantity of material). Hence Jean Cocteau's hyperbole was not entirely absurd: 'Dior is that nimble genius unique to
our age with the magical name combining God and gold [
dieu et orThis, then, was the legendary figure whose second collection was shown at the Savoy hotel in London in the autumn of 1947, to such acclaim that the Royal family requested a separate, private viewing the following morning at the French embassy. The audience included Her Majesty the Queen (subsequently the Queen Mother), her daughter Princess Margaret, Princess Marina (the wife of the King's younger brother, the Duke of Kent), and Marina's sister Princess Olga of Yugoslavia. 'These ladies were all devoured with curiosity to see the "New Look" dresses, of which they had heard so much,' wrote Dior, some years later, while maintaining a discreet silence as to whether Princess Elizabeth had also attended the show.
'The huge ball dresses, with their voluminous skirts concealed by covers, were smuggled out of the service door of the Savoy. The whole operation took place amidst a telltale rustle of material.' Nevertheless, the Dior cavalcade arrived undetected at the French Embassy, whereupon 'one final, chaotic, rather emotional rehearsal' ensued, in an attempt 'to reconcile royal protocol with the other strict protocol that of the show' Needless to say, Dior pronounced himself smitten by the Queen. 'I was instantly struck by her elegance, which I had been quite unprepared for; that, and the atmosphere of graciousness which she radiates. The mauve dress and draped hat which she wore would have been quite inconceivable on anyone else as it was, on her they looked wonderful, and I felt that nothing else would have shown her to such advantage.'
As for Princess Margaret: Dior was impressed by her poise, and she sufficiently taken by his designs to make subsequent trips to his couture salon in Paris, and to order a number of outfits. Among them was the white ballgown she was to wear for her 21st birthday in 1951 and in which she was photographed by Cecil Beaton; she later described it as 'my favourite dress of all'. By this point, Dior's clients also included the Duchess of Windsor, a woman still loathed by the Queen Mother for her part in the abdication crisis, although Dior's diplomacy appeared as equal to this potential conflict as it was with those women momentarily confused as to whether their bills were to be paid by husbands or lovers. But perhaps the most remarkable manifestation of a sartorial entente cordiale took place at a Dior fashion show staged at Blenheim Palace on 3 November 1954, with Princess Margaret as guest of honour.
The event was organised in aid of the Red Cross by the Duchess of Marlborough, who conducted a preparatory mission to avenue Montaigne,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], dressed in her Red Cross uniform (an outfit admired by the couturier as setting off 'the chic of her tall figure'). Dior travelled to England with 14 models and 100 garments, including 'la robe Blenheim', a pink satin evening gown designed especially for the occasion. The exquisite irony of the event was not lost on Dior,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], who remarked on the fact that the palace 'had been built for the Duke of Marlborough, by Queen Anne, in recognition of his great victories over the French. When I saw the two flags of France and England fluttering together in the afternoon wind over the palace, I silently asked Marlborough's pardon for having set up the triumphant standard of French fashion in such a place. At any moment I expected his indignant ghost to join the line of mannequins.'
Sixteen hundred guests paid five guineas each, lining the vast Blenheim state rooms hung with tapestries commemorating the French defeat in battle.
The Daily Telegraph
reported, somewhat breathlessly, that 'Paris came to Blenheim by air and rail in a cloud of Dior perfume. Oxfordshire came by car, through rural scenes heavy with the scent of wood smoke and autumn leaves. The two met in the halls of the first stately home to stage a dress show.' Princess Margaret arrived in black velvet and a mink cape, to be greeted by lines of uniformed Red Cross nurses, and heralded by the national anthem and theplayed on the organ at the end of the Blenheim library. 'Slowly, she walked along the aisle one sixth of a mile long which the mannequins were each to tread so many times later.'
Three years later Dior died suddenly of a heart attack, at only 52, and a thousand mourners gathered for his funeral at l'Eglise SaintHonor d'Eylau in Paris on 27 October 1957. The Duchess of Windsor was among the mourners clad in black Dior, alongside the designer's friends, models and admirers. But his house lives on, and the original spirit of Christian Dior was palpable within Galliano's spring couture show, which may now prove to be his last of any kind, in its recreation of the New Look. There were glorious ballgowns and shimmering tulle dresses, pink and white as an English rose, fit for a palace and a princess
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