Christian Dior

Born:-01/21/1905
Died:-10/24/1957

The Christian Dior trademark - the initials "CD" set within a Louis XVI style medallion - has become a twentieth century icon. In 1946, French businessman Marcel Boussac teamed up with the young Christian Dior to found a new couture house. The first Christian Dior collection, presented in 1947, was an instant hit worldwide. It made history with the "New Look", a backlash against wartime austerity which represented the start of a lasting influence in fashion.

Founded in 1947, the House at 30, Avenue Montaigne, near the Champs-Elysées, is synonymous with the ubiquitous New Look and the image of the eternal Parisian woman with her fine shoulders and narrow waist. In the ten years from 1947 to 1957 (when he died), Christian Dior succeeded in creating a fashion house whose name is famous the world over. He was a pioneer in developing licences for stockings, cosmetics and accessories, a policy that has been much imitated since.

The House of Dior was bought out in 1987. Today, it belongs to a world leader in manufacture of luxury goods, the Louis-Vuitton-Moét-Hennessy Group.

After Dior's death in 1957, Yves Saint Laurent was asked to design the haute couture collections, followed by Marc Bohan. Today the haute couture, fur and ready-to-wear lines of the fashion house is now in the hands of the Pavarotti of the fashion world - the Italian Gianfranco Ferré. To Ferré Dior is the Watteau of couturiers, full of delicate and chic nuances. Being Italian in a house of French tradition is to participate ahead of one's time in the Europe preceding the millenium.

Hence, the loyalty displayed to the savoir faire delivered by the Dior workshops specialising in suits with sable piping to sumptuous gala gowns that lend a sense of structure to the romantic. In one particularly spectacular presentation, Gianfranco Ferré chose to pay tribute to Cézanne during the retrospective dedicated to the artist by the Grand Palais in Paris. Using blue-green muslin and chiffon in the hues of the Montagne Sainte-Victoire near Aix-en-Provence, the Dior touch was all there, detectable in the cut of the suits, the sense of detail, the inlays and hidden seams, the embroidered, white guipure coats, the swallow-tail jacket trains and the velvet evening gowns. All faithful to the "sense of the accomplished and perfect" close to the heart of the inventor of the New Look.
He died at the age of 52of a heart attack.

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