Monsieur Dior steals the show from Mademoiselle Chanel

"My dream? To make women happier and more beautiful.” – So said Christian Dior in 1947 in Paris, the city still trying to recover from the Nazi occupation of Europe, where a life of cuts and austerity continued to affect all aspects of life.

In the years before the war, Mademoiselle Coco Chanel brought the news of theWomen's Liberation.

She shortened the skirts, loosened the corsets, made the hats smaller, and brought us the pantsuits.

In today's language, women Paris "Fly on her" and she enjoyed enormous success until the war, when in order to survive and remain in existence, she took a Nazi lover, a fact and decision that would cost her dearly towards the end of the war.

Paris was very angry with her and Coco Chanel decided to abandon and leave.

So who are you, Monsieur Dior?

In 1946, Christian Dior was approached by the richest textile magnate, Marcel Boussac, who was very impressed with Dior's work and asked him to come with him and revive an old fashion house called Philippe et Gaston. The offer was very tempting, but Dior refused to work under another name, insisting that the new house be named after himself. Boussac agreed to support Dior, and in December of that year the first house opened on Boulevard Montaigne in Paris.

Not long after, the year is 1947. Everyone is eagerly awaiting the young designer's first collection.

And now the square, masculine jackets are gone, the short, neat skirts from the war period and before disappeared, replaced by elegant, tailored jackets, shaped precisely to the curves of the woman's body.

The waists are smaller than you might imagine, the hips are excessively rounded, and the skirts have once again swirled with yards of fabric. A bold debut that became a real revolution! And so, everything Coco had done for years was gone. All the Parisian elite and the city's most stylish people appeared in the audience and the atmosphere was "electric."

Christian Dior's family was wealthy and he grew up on a clifftop in Normandy in a house painted a soft pink mixed with gravel gray. These two shades remained his favorite colors in couture.

Housemaids and seamstresses worked in the linen room, and Dior recalled that it was his favorite place because "I was engrossed in watching the women around the oil lamp, sharpening their needles.".

As a child, Dior showed a passion for flowers and was always happy to spend hours among the plants and beds or reading botanical catalogs. This interest, which greatly influenced his work as a designer, he inherited from his mother. He always used an abundance of floral patterns on his dresses, and his salons were always filled with magnificent flower arrangements. The theme of the garden and flowers runs through the company to this day.

Many newspapers around the world were duly impressed by Dior's debut collection, which quickly graced the cover of American Vogue, which read: "Dear Christian, your dresses have such a new look!"

And so the term “The New Look” was created, and with it a completely new way was born.

Dior's tailoring has often been described as having an architectural quality and his love of beautifully constructed garments is his hallmark. This Dior collection was breathtaking in its silhouette. The shoulders are carefully rounded, the waists are curved, and the skirts are elegant and flared, exquisitely delicately tailored and flattering.

Many women thought that the end of wartime austerity couldn't come soon enough, and buying a "New Look" suit was one way to mark the beginning of a new era in fashion.

Dior's love of the female form was what brought the illusion to these designs, so that anyone who wasn't naturally hourglass-shaped could look like one with the clothes from the new collection. The look was soft and modern, a true fashion classic.

Dior's second collection for Fall/Winter 1947 was eagerly anticipated by the fashion world, and the question was asked: "Will the designer be able to deliver another collection as curated and innovative as his debut?" The answer was: Yes!!!
American Vogue magazine wrote: “The second collection proves that he is not just occasionally good.”

The new silhouette continued the feminine shape and accentuated the waist even more tightly, and the skirts were fuller. Vogue reported: “Skirts incredibly wide, very long,” and Dior recalled the fantastic amount of material that this time reached to the ankles and the fabrics were luxurious and heavy.

And if we pause for a moment, just a year earlier, Chanel’s fashion had liberated women from the weight of these fabrics and the length of their skirts. But Dior spoke of emotional lightness and reveled in the liberation from war. He called this era a second “golden age” and believed that “when hearts were light, only fabrics could not weigh down the body.” Dior increasingly placed importance on accessories, and this second collection of his featured his signature side hat, as well as his sparkling, statement necklaces.

Over the following seasons, Dior remained true to his groundbreaking silhouette, and each collection was received with as much appreciation as the one before it. The changes from collection to collection were subtle, but they still made the collection look new. And so Dior entered the 1950s with an established reputation as one of the most important names in fashion.

Couturier Christian Dior's career was short-lived. The incredibly talented designer died of a sudden heart attack ten years later, at the age of just 52, while on vacation in Italy.

To this day, Dior remains a design house with a strong foundation, and the designers who followed him, such as Yves Saint Laurent, John Galliano, Raf Simons, and the current one, Maria Grazia Chiuri, not only respected his nostalgia for the styles of previous centuries but also continued to create designs that reinterpret and recognize the importance of his contribution to the history of fashion: the New Look.

Want to visit Dior Galleries?

If you liked this story and want to learn about Dior's work, then you should definitely visit the Dior Museum in Paris. You can read about it in the article Dior Museum Paris: Fantasy, Aesthetics and History.