Miss Dior: A Story of Courage and Couture (from the acclaimed author of Coco Chanel)

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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. 15, 1948. DR/Collection Christian Dior Parfums + Fonds Nicolas Crespelle

Miss Dior: A Story of Courage and Couture 9780571356522: Miss Dior: A Story of Courage and Couture

Just along the path, I find a maze made out of privet hedges, and remember that one of the curators in the Dior archives told me that Catherine, in old age, had described this to him as an important feature of the garden in her childhood. I am tall enough to be able to see over the hedges, but a little girl, running through the green labyrinth, would have to know it very well to find her way out. I know my own way, comes a whisper in my head, though I cannot be sure whether it is mine, or a memory of my lost sister’s voice, when we played together in the secret gardens of our own childhood.When the French designer Christian Dior presented his first collection in Paris in 1947, he changed fashion forever. Dior’s “New Look” created a striking, romantic vision of femininity, luxury, and grace, making him—and his last name—famous overnight. One woman informed Dior’s vision more than any other: his sister, Catherine, a Resistance fighter, concentration camp survivor, and cultivator of rose gardens who inspired Dior’s most beloved fragrance, Miss Dior. Yet the story of Catherine’s remarkable life—so different from her famous brother’s—has never been told, until now. One of the words most often used about Catherine Dior, by her few surviving friends and relatives, is ‘discreet’; and it is telling that even a decade after her death, several of those who knew her still request anonymity when answering my questions about her relationship with Hervé des Charbonneries.

Dior’s Iconic ‘Miss Dior’ Dress The Story Behind Christian Dior’s Iconic ‘Miss Dior’ Dress

verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ Long after Christian discovered the delights of the capital city, he remained devoted to the family home in Granville, and to the grounds in which he had spent so much time as a small boy. In 1925 – when he was supposed to be hard at work in Paris as a student of political science, having been refused permission by his parents to study architecture – Christian found the time to design a new garden feature at Les Rhumbs, with arched trellises covered by roses surrounding a pool of water, complete with a small fountain. Dior, who’d worked for the couturier Lucien Lelong during the war, showed his debut collection at 30 Avenue Montaigne, Paris, on 12 February 1947 (the “new look”, as it was christened by Carmel Snow, the editor of American Harper’s Bazaar ). His sister was in the audience, breathing air that was heady with scent, as well as covetousness: his models wore the soon-to-be-launched Miss Dior, its formula inspired by the jasmine and roses Catherine adored (she was by now working as a florist). But as her biographer Justine Picardie admits, she would only ever be an “intangible presence” at the house. Later, there would be a dress, also called Miss Dior: a gown covered in hand-stitched petals. Catherine, though, was not a fancy dresser. In photographs, she is ever practical-looking. Her clothes are chosen for warmth and ease, not for drawing the eye. Christian Dior’s friend and colleague at Lelong, Pierre Balmain, gives a vivid account in his memoir of the customers they were obliged to see, and Dior’s own sardonic response. ‘The clientele at Lelong during the Occupation consisted mainly of wives of French officials who had to keep up appearances, and of industrialists who were carrying on business as usual. Apart from Madame Abetz, the French wife of the German Commissioner, few Germans came to us. Nevertheless, there was still a somewhat unreal, strange atmosphere about the showings. I remember I was standing with Christian Dior behind a screen, scanning the audience awaiting the first showing of 1943, the women who were enjoying the fruits of their husbands’ profiteering. “Just think!” he exclaimed. “All those women going to be shot in Lelong dresses!”’Christian’s surviving writing also provides a sense of the emotional resonance and powerful influence of the landscape. The young trees that were planted, as he described them in his memoir, ‘grew up, as I did, against the wind and the tides. This is no figure of speech, since the garden hung right over the sea, which could be seen through the railings, and lay exposed to all the turbulence of the weather, as if in prophecy of the troubles of my own life … the walls which encompassed the garden were not enough, any more than the precautions encompassing my childhood were enough, to shield us from storms.’ Picardie is a former editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar magazine, a former fashion columnist for this paper and the author of an acclaimed biography of Coco Chanel. Fashion is in her bones, but while I wish I could tell you that Miss Dior is about swishing silks and mirrored salons, it isn’t. These certainly vein the book, but come to seem brittle intrusions in an otherwise eerie and distressing story. None of the rooms in Les Rhumbs is furnished. Instead, they are lined with museum cabinets for the display of artefacts, drawings and photographs; on this occasion, relating mostly to Princess Grace’s wardrobe. Yet for all the poignancy of these objects – in particular, the image of a youthful Grace Kelly, wearing an ethereal white Dior gown at the ball celebrating her engagement to Prince Rainier in 1956, unaware that she would die before growing old – Les Rhumbs remains a monument to a more distant past. For this is the place where Maurice and Madeleine Dior moved at the beginning of the century and raised their five children. They had married in 1898, when Madeleine was a beautiful nineteen-year-old girl; Maurice Dior, at twenty-six, was already an ambitious young man, intent on expanding the fertiliser manufacturing business that his grandfather had set up in 1832. By 1905, Maurice and his cousin Lucien were running the flourishing company together, and its growing success was reflected in their social ascendancy. Lucien Dior would become a politician, and remained in parliament until his death in 1932, while a rivalry developed between his wife Charlotte and Madeleine, apparently arising from their competitive aspirations to be the most fashionably dressed chatelaines of the wealthiest households. It had been a difficult decision for Christian to leave Catherine in Provence in 1941. ‘I disliked intensely the idea of returning to a humiliated and beaten Paris,’ he wrote in his memoir. ‘I also had to consider the future of our agricultural venture if it was left under the sole supervision of my sister.’ He does not explain what, exactly, gave him the impetus to resume his previous career in fashion; but in any event, he found a job working for Lucien Lelong, who was also the president of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture, the official trade federation for the industry, and as such, responsible for negotiating with the Nazi authorities in Paris. I think my mother was in love with one of the Polish guys in F2. He died during the war, she was left alone, and then my parents met.’ Nicolas wondered if his father was jealous of Lili’s love affair with another member of the Resistance before they met, or whether it was simply that people of his parents’ generation avoided discussing the German Occupation of France. Nevertheless, he could see the powerful bond that existed between his mother and Catherine, which led to Catherine being chosen as his godmother. The two former resistants continued to spend much time together, for though Nicolas and his sister went to school in Paris, his parents had a holiday home in Provence, in a village close to Catherine’s home in Callian. ‘Catherine and my mother trusted each other completely,’ said Nicolas. Their attachment was based on their shared wartime experience in F2, and because Catherine’s own silence had been responsible for saving Lili’s life.

Miss Dior, A Story of Courage and Couture by - Booktopia Miss Dior, A Story of Courage and Couture by - Booktopia

Miss Dior is a wartime story of freedom and fascism, beauty and betrayal and ‘a gripping story’ (Antonia Fraser). As subtle as it is fragrant, Justine Picardie’s book casts a strong spell that lingers.” —Benjamin Taylor, author of Here We Are and The Hue and Cry at Our House Yet the Gestapo and their French collaborators showed no signs of retreating, and as they intensified their investigations into the Resistance, the number of arrests and executions increased. While the Allies fought to gain control of Cherbourg and Caen in northern France, the Gestapo had successfully infiltrated the F2 network in Paris, through a French female informer of the same age as Catherine. She, too, was involved in a close-knit network of agents that had been formed during the Occupation: but their aims were to support the Nazis and annihilate the Resistance. On 6 July 1944, they finally closed in on Catherine: she was arrested on the street by a group of four armed men who took her bicycle and handbag, forced her into their car, blindfolded her and drove her to their sinister headquarters in the heart of Paris. Thus began a lengthy and cruel ordeal that would lead, ultimately, to Catherine’s deportation and imprisonment in a series of German concentration camps. The overdue restoration of Catherine Dior's extraordinary life, from her brother's muse to Holocaust survivorWhile her extreme bravery during the war is not in doubt, there’s little for Picardie to go on even in that period Though 12 years his junior Catherine (1917-2008) was close to Dior in temperament and shared particularly his devotion to flowers. As children, growing up in the grand Villa les Rhumbs near Mont-Saint-Michel, he and she were allowed to create flower beds in the shapes of a tiger and butterfly. But for all the romance of the notion that couture represented a quintessentially Parisian art, it was governed by the strictly enforced rule of the German authorities, with dozens of precise regulations controlling everything from textile rationing to the ownership of the ateliers. Jewish proprietors had their businesses confiscated, losing their possessions, their liberty and in many cases their lives. Picardie’s research is remarkable, her writing grabs and holds the reader tight from beginning to end . . . An exceptional discussion on France during WWII and the couture industry, [Miss Dior] is fascinating reading and will not disappoint.” —Judith Reveal, New York Journal of Books