Christian Dior – snippets of French history.

Christian Dior was born in Normandy in 1905, one of five children.  His father was a wealthy businessman.  Christian’s parents had high hopes for him as a diplomat, but he was determined to be an artist.  As a boy he sold fashion sketches on the street for the equivalent of about 1p each – they must be worth a fortune now if anybody has still got one! Talented but cripplingly shy, Christian’s sketches sold fairly well and encouraged him further in to art.

In 1928, aged only 23,  Christian set up an art gallery, financed by his father.  Along with his friend (he was gay and had several lovers, always very discreetly) he sold pictures by artists such a Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau and Salvador Dali. He appears to have done quite well.  Both he and his father, however, lost everything during the Great Depression in 1931.  Christian could easily have sunk in to a nobody, particularly as it coincided the death of his mother, and one of his brothers being committed to a mental asylum.

  Christian Dior 1905 – 1957.  He was a quiet, shy man by nature, but covered this up with a lot of flamboyance. He would visibly tremble at times but learnt to act in a gregarious way and few knew of his awkwardness

During the Second World War, Dior designed clothes for Nazi wives and the wives of French collaborators. This was not because he was pro-German, but because he needed to survive. Ironically, his sister Ginette-Catherine, was a French Resistance member at the same time, though this was unknown to him.  She was caught and incarcerated in Ravensbruck till the end of the war.  When Christian went to pick her up at the station when the war ended he didn’t recognise her for she was so emaciated. The perfume Miss Dior was named for her, and the siblings remained close.  Indeed, she was an administrator in the Dior museum till she died in 2008.

   Dress called “Cafe Anglais”.  I love it.  Dior stuck to simple and elegant lines, yet was a trail-blazer in new design

After WWII, in 1947, he expanded his shop and his ideas,  and in under ten years he was the most celebrated dress designer in the world, with outlets on  five of the seven world continents.

Dior died of a heart attack while on holiday in Italy during a game of cards.  He was worth $10 million, $114 million in today’s terms.

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