One of his most lasting contributions to the brand is unquestionably the Lady Dior bag. In 1989, Gianfranco Ferré began his appointment as creative director for the house of Dior. And no Dior handbag history would be complete without the style made famous by the most regal of Miss Diors-a certain Princess Diana, for whom Dior named the Lady Dior bag. Since then, John Galliano splashed the Oblique all over everything from itty-bitty bikinis to his signature giddy-up Saddle bags, and current Dior creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri has applied it liberally to handbags of all shapes and sizes. It was two years before the world first saw it look 42 from the spring 1969 collection featured a positively modish model wearing a woolly coat, bug-eye specs, and a boxy shoulder bag bearing the would-be iconic monogram. (One Yves Saint Laurent was next in the line of succession, after which Bohan arrived in late 1960.) In 1967, Bohan drummed up the Oblique monogram, in which the four letters of Dior appear tossed together at an italic tilt and then stacked upon each other over and over until they form a diagonal line. On 1stDibs, find an exquisite range of vintage Christian Dior clothing, jewelry, handbags and other items.But the cult of Dior handbags as we know it now-the Lady bag, the Saddle bag, the Book tote-should really be traced to Marc Bohan, the second designer to take the helm of the fashion house following Monsieur Dior’s untimely death from a heart attack in 1957. With the luxuriously full skirts of his New Look, suits and his drop-dead gorgeous evening dresses and ball gowns worthy of any princess, Dior gave women the gift of glamour they’d lost in the miserable years of war. In the subsequent decade, Paris ruled as the undisputed fashion capital of the world, and Christian Dior reigned as its king. Rather than rationing, his ladies wanted reams of fabric and 19-inch waists enforced by wire corsets, and the fashion world concurred. They were cut and shaped like architecture, on strong foundations that molded women and “freed them from nature,” Dior said. His skirts could have 40-meter-circumference hems, and outfits could weigh up to 60 pounds. “This changes everything.”ĭior’s collection definitively declared that opulence, luxury and femininity were in. “God help those who bought before they saw Dior,” said Snow. “It’s quite a revolution, dear Christian!” exclaimed Carmel Snow, the prescient American editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar, famously proclaiming, “Your dresses have such a new look.” The press ran with the description, christening Dior’s debut Spring/Summer haute couture collection the New Look. They needed to dream anew.Īnd Dior delivered: He designed a collection for a bright, optimistic future. Just two years after the end of World War II, the fashion crowd and the moribund haute couture industry were yearning, comme tout Paris, for security and prosperity, desperate to discard the drab, sexless, utilitarian garb imposed by wartime deprivation. Just five years later, with the backing of industrialist Marcel Boussac, the ascendant Dior established his own fashion house, at 30 avenue Montaigne in Paris. After seven years as an art dealer, Dior retrained as a fashion illustrator, eventually landing a job as a fashion designer for Robert Piguet, and in 1941, following a year of military service, he joined the house of Lucien Lelong. This was the start of Dior’s rise in the city’s creative milieu, where he befriended Pablo Picasso and Jean Cocteau. However, they agreed to bankroll an art gallery, which Dior opened in 1928 in Paris with a friend. His prosperous haute bourgeois parents wanted him to become a diplomat despite his interest in art and architecture. Vintage Dior bags, shoes, evening dresses, shirts and other garments and accessories are known today for their feminine and sophisticated sensibility.ĭior was born in Granville, on the Normandy coast, in 1905. When Christian Dior launched his couture house, in 1946, he wanted nothing less than to make “an elegant woman more beautiful and a beautiful woman more elegant.” He succeeded, and in doing so the visionary designer altered the landscape of 20th century fashion.
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