From Christian Dior to Dior: the story of a man and a brand national heritage of France
Christian Dior was born in Granville, a town in the coastal region of Normandy (France), on January 21, 1905, into a bourgeois family, formed by the marriage of Maurice Dior and Madeleine Martin. Christian was the second of the couple’s five children.
When he was five years old, his family moved to Paris. There he will later study Political Science, since his family’s dream was always for him to pursue a diplomatic career; But his passion for fashion was stronger and the young Dior alternated his studies with the sale of figurines and sketches to different Parisian publications.
In 1928, he permanently left his studies and, with money from his father’s fertilizer business, opened a small art gallery in Paris, where he sold works by emerging artists, including Pablo Picasso. The crash of 1929 in the United States affected both his father’s company, which went bankrupt, and the gallery, which lost many of its buyers.
Added to this are the death of his mother and that of a brother, and Dior, a very shy, sensitive boy with impeccable manners, closes the gallery, and knows what it is like to sleep in the homes of friends and acquaintances until he manages to find work at Robert Piguet’s couture house, one of the most famous. of the moment, where he will coincide with Pierre Balmain.
In this era of great creativity, he will surprise including, in one of the 1938 collections, the famous houndstooth print. This will not be the first time that Christian Dior innovates using fabrics and prints until then reserved for textiles for decoration, such as brocade, toile de jouy and the cannage or grid.
Like many men of his generation, Christian Dior was called up during World War II (although he did not go to the front) and therefore left the Piguet house. He will be replaced by Marc Bohan. Due to those whims of fate, decades later, when Yves Saint Laurent leaves Dior to do his military service, it will be Marc Bohan who will replace him at the head of the brand.
In 1941, Christian Dior began working at Lucien Lelong, another of the great couture houses, where he would meet Pierre Balmain again. There he will remain until, In 1946, he founded his own haute couture brand, with the help of an investor named Marcel Boussac.
Coco Chanel, who had led fashion and created the trends of the previous decades, had fallen into disgrace after World War II and is accused of collaborating with the Nazis.. Fleeing the scandal, the designer moved to Switzerland, where she lived for a decade.
Despite the surprise of Simons’ resignation, and after six months of rumors about possible candidates, the LVMH group found someone who would replace him, making, in the process, history. Maria Grazia Chiuri becomes 2016 the first woman named creative director of the brand after almost seven decades of the maison’s life.
The Italian, who had just teamed up with Pierpaolo Piccoli Chiuri at Valentino, took the reins of the women’s haute couture collections, ready-to-wear and accessories. Since then, her parades with feminist messages are famous.
like the famous We should all be feminists (We should all be feminists) which was printed on a t-shirt and was a bestseller, starting an era in which fashion was seen as another means of communicating messages.
It has also managed to increase the brand’s turnover, which predicts a future for the firm that has turned 76 years old and is already gearing up for the celebration of its 80th anniversary in 2026. It will be an occasion to remember the man who gave its name to the brand .
The one who revolutionized fashion without intending it and who never craved fame or glory, just to be able to do what he was passionate about: “Being natural and sincere, you can often create revolutions without having looked for them,” he stated.
In these almost eight decades, the brand, like many others whose founders died many years ago, has shortened its name and gone from being Christian Dior to simply being Dior, but the myth remains.
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