Christian Dior

Posted by Kym on July 2nd, 2010 at 12:23pm

Christian Dior’s beautiful, ultra-feminine ‘New Look’ followed the pragmatic, masculinised style that had dominated the war years and is now being incorporated into some of the leading big and tall mens clothing lines. He cleverly assessed the psychological mood of this post-war period, and his 1947 collection epitomized elegance, glamour and sophistication; women around the world embraced the hourglass silhouette once more.

Dior apprenticed with Piguet, Leiong and Balmain before opening his own big mens clothing salon in 1945. His design career was cut short when, after 13 years, he died suddenly, leaving a legacy with which few others could compete.

His sculptural creations, like those of Cristobal Balenciaga, were fashioned using firm, synthetic materials including stiffened nylon, rayon and composite fabrics, which were ‘heat set’ to hold their shape.

He contended that when designing his big and tall shirts, shape guided him first, then fabric, then color. His work was characterized by a use of elaborate construction techniques that had historical precedents in the nineteenth-century Victorian and Edwardian eras. These included built-in petticoats and mini-waisted corsets, hip padding, bodice and skirt lining, reinforcements of seams and pleats, and the weighting of jacket and skirt hems. He said, ‘Without foundations, there can be no fashions’.

Dior reinstated the feminine silhouette after the style of the war years which had been influenced by the rations on fabric. Small waists, off the shoulder necklines and billowing skirts captured the hearts of the fashionable elite and Dior reinstated Paris as the centre of haute couture. From an economic point of view, it was crucial for France to retain her position, not only to support fashion, but the textile industry as well. For his achievements, Dior was awarded the prestigious Medaille d’Honneur by the French government.

Dior’s evening gowns often used exorbitant quantities of fabric, ranging from 15 to 80 meters (50 to 260 feet). His elegant, strapless gowns had boned corsets built into closely fitted bodices. In the late 1950s, Dior introduced very stylized silhouettes, which he called his A line and H line (1955), Y line (1956) and Freeline (1957). By this time, with international sales of couture, pret-a-porter, hats, shoes, furs and perfumes, his fashion empire earned the description, ‘General Motors of Haute Couture’ in the New York Times. His New York branch alone employed 1,200 people spread over 28 workrooms and included a private police force to prevent pirating.

When Dior died, his apprentice, Yves St Laurent became the head designer and continued the long era of loose shapes, clearly evident in his first Dior collection called the ‘Trapeze’ line of 1958. These unwaisted garments, which hung from the shoulders, opened couture to the larger figure amd ‘mothers-in-waiting’. The Dior label now trades under the Moet Hennessy- Louis Vuitton (LVMH) syndicate and John
Galliano has been its recent head designer. Galliano has managed to recreate the image of quality, exclusivity and good taste.

Under Arts and Design