Dior Born: The Man Behind Fashion's New Look

Christian Dior was a prisoner of war for two years in Germany and came out with a desire to make elegant things for a world that had almost stopped believing in them. Born on January 21, 1905, in Granville, Normandy, he was the son of a wealthy fertilizer manufacturer who lost everything in the 1929 crash. Dior sold fashion sketches on the streets of Paris to survive. He worked for several couturiers through the 1930s and the war years, learning the trade while France was under occupation. In December 1946, the textile magnate Marcel Boussac financed his own fashion house. Dior's first collection, shown on February 12, 1947, was immediately called the "New Look" by Carmel Snow of Harper's Bazaar. The silhouette was revolutionary: rounded shoulders, a nipped waist, a full skirt that used yards of fabric. After years of wartime rationing, when fabric was controlled and women's clothing was utilitarian, the New Look was deliberately, almost defiantly extravagant. Women cried at the shows. Men wrote outraged op-eds about frivolity and waste. Some women in the streets physically attacked models wearing the new designs, viewing them as an insult to the sacrifices of the war years. It didn't matter. Women wanted it. The New Look restored Paris as the global center of fashion, a position it had lost during the occupation. Dior became the most famous designer in the world almost overnight. He expanded into accessories, perfume, and licensing, establishing the model that modern luxury fashion houses still follow. He died of a heart attack in Montecatini, Italy, on October 24, 1957, at 52, just a decade into a house that has now outlasted him by nearly seventy years. His assistant, a 21-year-old named Yves Saint Laurent, succeeded him.