Christian Dior Ivory Jacquard gown by John Galliano (SS 1998)

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Christian Dior

Christian Dior was born in Granville, Normandy in 1905 and came to fashion after running an art gallery in Paris where he showed work by Salvador Dalí, Man Ray and Jean Cocteau. He opened his own couture house in 1946 with the backing of French textile magnate Marcel Boussac. His first collection, presented in February 1947 and quickly dubbed the New Look by the press, introduced rounded shoulders, a cinched waist, padded hips and a full skirt that fell to mid-calf. The collection was immediately controversial, as fabric rationing had only recently ended and the extravagance of the silhouette provoked fierce debate across Europe and America, but it nonetheless transformed the direction of postwar fashion within a season. The Bar Suit, the central piece of that debut collection, has been reinterpreted by every subsequent creative director of the house. Dior produced twenty-two couture collections before dying of a heart attack in Italy in 1957. The house has since been led by Yves Saint Laurent, Marc Bohan, Gianfranco Ferré, John Galliano, Raf Simons and Maria Grazia Chiuri, each reinterpreting the founding silhouette for their own era. The Christian Dior Museum, opened in his childhood home in Granville in 1997, holds a permanent collection of his work and archive.

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