Christian Dior
A new era is poised to begin at Dior, when Jonathan Anderson, the 40-year-old Irish designer widely regarded as one of the best of his generation, shows his first collection as creative director for menswear, womenswear, and couture.
The Maison’s story begins on February 12, 1947, when a new couturier named Christian Dior presented his first show to the press in an elegant salon on the Avenue Montaigne. A model sauntered out wearing a calf-grazing skirt made with 20 yards of black wool, and a cream shantung jacket with a tightly nipped waist that flared into a regal peplum—a “New” look that has since become universally recognizable. In a postwar world still under continued rationing, the ensemble was downright shocking; but to a legion of women used to boxy suits and drab skirts, Dior’s ultra-feminine styles were a blissful reminder of better days—and the promise of a return to luxury. “You waved your wand and suddenly I was young and hopeful again,” one ardent fan wrote Monsieur Dior. “I love you.”
It’s incredible to think that the house that Dior, built in only ten years—he died in 1957 after a heart attack at the age of 52—would not only survive, but become one of the most widely respected and influential ateliers around the world. This was due in part to Dior’s assistant, a young man by the name of Yves Saint Laurent who took over, though his tenure turned out to also be short-lived when he was called up for military service. In 1961, Marc Bohan, another young Parisian designer, who had spent time at Jean Patou, was hired as creative director, and he would go on to have the longest tenure at the label out of any other designer, eventually replaced by Gianfranco Ferré in 1989. The Italian designer stayed for another seven years.
But throughout these years, the maison had not yet recaptured the zeitgeist the way it did in its early years. All that changed in 1996, when the French businessman Bernard Arnault who had purchased the maison a few years earlier named a young John Galliano to the top post. Galliano was a designer after Dior’s own heart—half confectioner, whipping up fantasies of silk and embroidery that exalted beauty to the extreme, and half showman, sending horses galloping down the runway and turning it into a theater stage. In 2011 he went on trial after making anti-Semitic remarks, some captured on video. He was forced to step down from his position and entered a rehab facility.
Raf Simons, a Belgian designer who was stark and precise where Galliano was prone to flights of fancy, made his debut at the maison with a tour de force couture collection in July 2012, one that moved Dior in a more streamlined, but no less elegant, direction. Simons never quite recaptured the majesty of that first outing, but his abrupt departure in late 2015 shocked the industry nonetheless. In July 2016, Maria Grazia Chiuri, a Roman designer who was co-creative director at Valentino, was chosen to pick up the Dior reins. She was the first woman designer at the company in its almost 80-year history, and during her nine years at the helm she made her feminine—and feminist—energy well known. Each season she collaborated with both legendary and undersung female artists and artisans, highlighting their work and emphasizing the importance of community. Fittingly, her debut collection featured T-shirts emblazoned with the phrase WE SHOULD ALL BE FEMINISTS across the front.
