“Magic . . . was what everyone now wanted from Paris,” theVogue editor Bettina Ballard wrote after seeing the show. “Never has there been a moment more climactically right for a Napoleon, an Alexander the Great, a Caesar of the couture. Paris fashion was waiting to be seized and shaken and given direction. There has never been an easier or a more complete conquest than that of Christian Dior in 1947.”
To his own surprise (“My God, what have I done?” he cried after the show, face pink with lipstick kisses), Dior had divined l’air du temps—the mood of the times. To women starved for glamour, Dior’s “New Look,” as it was quickly dubbed, was the proverbial cake—and the world gobbled up his confections ravenously.
For the man whose name itself prophesied his good fortune—dieu et or, a combination of “God” and “gold,” as his friend Jean Cocteau observed—it was almost too easy. Buyers lined up to order even before the show ended. American editors cabled the mothership to reserve ink. American buyers, sailing into New York Harbor, turned right back around, cursing themselves for missing the show of the decade. “There are moments when fashion changes fundamentally,” British Vogue wrote. “This is one of those moments.”
Not everyone was convinced. Soon after Dior’s debut, at a photo shoot in the Montmartre market, his prettily trussed-up mannequins were attacked by outraged female street vendors. Later that year, he made his first trip to the United States and received a decidedly cool welcome. Progressive Chicagoans greeted him with signs bearing slogans like “Christian Dior Go Home!” and “Mr. Dior, We Abhor Dresses to the Floor.” Anti–New Look clubs sprung up from Ohio to California. American women weren’t keen to undo decades of fashion progress. Boned corsets? Padded bras and hips? No way.
But most were soon seduced by Dior’s draped delights. “It took one swish of the hips and America was won,” observed the novelist Colette. The enterprising couturier wasted no time in capitalizing on what British Vogue pinpointed as “the real Elysian lift—the smirky, cat-in-cream thing that happens to women in front of mirrors.” Envisioning a globe people with customers clad in head-to-toe Dior, he set about building an empire of elegance, establishing outposts in New York, London, and Caracas. “There is nothing I would like better than to make every woman look and feel like a duchess,” he said.
Licensing was the quickest way to spread his message of democratic glamour: separate divisions for affordable luxuries like hosiery, gloves, jewelry, scarves, handbags, swimsuits, even specialty undergarments. Delman designer Roger Vivier created shoes as splendid as the outfits. Vibrant lipstick and perfume—Miss Dior was the first, followed by Diorama and Diorissimo—completed the Dior woman’s toilette.
As it would eventually become clear, Dior was a trailblazer, paving the way for other designers who would boost brand recognition by lending their names to even the smallest—and sometimes silliest—of products. (“Dior Introduces Gold Brassiere,” trumpeted a 1957 headline.) Soon, the House of Dior was overflowing with 25,000 visitors each season, all anxiously anticipating the latest decree from this dictator of hemlines: reporters came, poised to dash off headlines; store owners rushed in, eager to manufacture imitations.
The master merchandiser also recognized the power of personality, becoming a bit of a showman in the press. He penned books on fashion, as well as his memoirs—none too prematurely, it would turn out. In 1957, just ten years after he’d catapulted to the top of the fashion heap, Dior, the “General Motors of haute couture,” collapsed of a heart attack at the age of 52. “Fashion’s tireless kingpin,” as he was eulogized in Time, had been the author of countless innovations, “the rise and fall of bosoms, the shrink and stretch of hips, the sight and flight of knees.”
Dior’s young assistant, Yves Saint Laurent, took over; he, too, was an instant success, making waves with his Trapeze dress. However, Saint Laurent was shortly called up for military service, and in 1961, Marc Bohan began a successful three-decade reign. He was followed by Gianfranco Ferré.
Despite the promising injection of money and energy [Bernard Arnault, now chairman of LVMH, bought the fashion house in 1984, and Dior perfumes in 1988], it remained something of a sleeping beauty, however, until 1996, when the British designer John Galliano was named to the top post.
Galliano was a designer after Dior’s own heart—half confectioner, whipping up fantasies of silk and embroidery that exalted beauty to the extreme; half showman, sending horses galloping down the runway and dressing models as homeless hobos in newspaper print-frocks. Like Dior, Galliano knew well the value of publicity: There were carnival-mirror reflections—echoes of Dior’s 1947 Montmartre mob when protesters stormed the Dior flagship after the infamous “Clochards” couture collection of 2000. “I would rather receive a pounding in three columns on the front page than get two lines of congratulation somewhere on the inside,” Dior once said.
Galliano also recognized the money-pumping power of accessories. His 1999 Saddle bag, rocked by the likes of pop princess Gwen Stefani, was an instant It; by 2003, it came in 125 variations. During the logomania craze around the turning of the millennium, Dior-branded products were hot targets for copyists, but that unfortunate circumstance only spurred demand, especially among a new generation drawn to punky pieces like a crystal skull ring.
Galliano’s outrageous impulses went too far, however, in 2011, when he was arrested following an ugly incident in a Paris cafe. He was accused of making anti-Semitic remarks to a couple dining nearby, and—although he apologized “for the sadness that this whole affair has caused”—he had no choice but to walk away from his post. In July, his right-hand man, Bill Gaytten, stepped in to design the haute couture collection. In September—sidelined in total humiliation, as his Parisian colleagues prepared to show their own spring lines—he was found guilty of “public insults based on origin, religious affiliation, race, or ethnicity.” His sentence was a suspended fine of $8,400.
In April 2012, the long wait for Galliano’s successor came to an end with the appointment of the Belgian designer Raf Simons, known for his color-washed minimalism at Jil Sander. Simons’s final collection for that label—a refreshingly modern take on blushing femininity, with a very Dior New Look volume and soft palette—was a promising preview of things to come. “For me the strongest impact is the first ten years of Dior and how to link that to the 21st century,” he told The New York Times when the news broke. “I find it very challenging to rethink couture.”less
Monsieur Dior probably would not have dared imagine the global reach and power of his brand today. From New York to Taipei, women the world over still hunger for his promise of glamour.
