Miss Dior

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Despite the fact that she is known because a per­fume was named after her, it is clear from the words of the oth­er women cap­tured by the Nazis and incar­cer­at­ed with her that her true lega­cy is her faith in her own abil­i­ties when faced with the unimag­in­able evil she wit­nessed in occu­pied France. Through the windows, I notice two tiny figures walking along the beach in the distance, an adult and a child; as the rain becomes heavier, they disappear out of sight. The literal translation of the phrase is “deceiving the eye”; what might be the visual illusion at work here? They were very traumatic - not just in the German concentration camps but prior to that at the hands of fellow Parisians who worked with the Nazis.

A quirk of Christian’s was that he named his creations, and one of if not his most favorite dress creation he also named “Miss Dior,” presumably to honor his sister. The juxtaposition of the terrible shadows and dazzling light is one of the great strengths of this book .As for the uncertainty regarding Catherine’s relationship with the Miss Dior dress: a clue may lie in the name of the collection where the gown first appeared, which Christian himself baptized the “Trompe-l’œil” line. Christian’s belief in clairvoyance, and the bonds between siblings draw a parallel with Picardie’s own experience of losing her sister, Ruth, to breast cancer in 1997. Yet the story of Catherine’s remarkable life—so different from her famous brother’s—has never been told, until now. And just for a moment, standing in Catherine’s former bedroom, I become aware of this unmistakable scent; not on my own skin, but emanating from some other, unseen source … perhaps the huge flagon of perfume presented to Princess Grace by Christian Dior, on show in a nearby gallery? It paints a portrait of the enigmatic woman behind the designer Christian Dior: his beloved younger sister Catherine, who inspired his most famous perfume and shaped his vision of femininity.

Catherine Dior in the “Doris” dress from Dior’s spring/summer 1947 collection at the baptism of her godson Nicolas Crespelle in Neuilly-sur-Seine on Feb. This is the story of a ghost who walked into my life on a sunlit morning and would not let go of me. But the elaborately decorated interiors that he described in such detail have vanished: gone are the china shepherdesses, glass bon-bon dishes, and all the other ornaments that Christian remembered in such detail. The siblings’ stories are profoundly intertwined: in Occupied France, as Christian honed his couture skills, Catherine dedicated herself to the Resistance, ultimately being captured by the Gestapo and sent to Ravensbruck, the only Nazi camp solely for women. Yet the calm professionalism of this explanation is at odds with the emotional intensity that Dior reveals in his memoir, when he declares that he is “obsessed” with the clothes he creates: “They preoccupy me, they occupy me, and finally they ‘post-occupy’ me, if I can risk the word.For this is a place where journeys begin, a starting point that could never be entirely forgotten; the restless waves and soaring seabirds a constant reminder of what might lie beyond the house on the headland. Through her use of these sources, Picardie is able to provide her readers with a good idea of the things that Catherine experienced. I’ve just been given a guided tour of the exhibition, each section staged in a different room that had been lived in by the Dior family in the early decades of the twentieth century, and I can’t help feeling a strange blurring of time. Clockwise from top left: the clifftop garden of Les Rhumbs; Madeleine and Maurice Dior; Les Rhumbs; Madeleine’s mother, Marie-Juliette Surosne; Christian (left) and Raymond in the garden; Catherine.