Shanghai hosts Christian Dior exhibition

Christian Dior grew up in a pink house, Villa Les Rhumbs, at Granville. The pink he always associated with childhood happiness bloomed into the myriad tints of the roses in the garden he designed there with his mother. It was these delicate pinks and vivid reds that represented the dual facets of femininity that Dior the couturier most wanted to highlight, and from 1947 they were a constant inspiration for him.

One epitomises romanticism, blossoming young beauty but also supremely delicate elegance, while the other is the colour par excellence for the lively, bold, unforgettably sublime modern woman. Year after year, Christian Dior explored every nuance of pink and red. In 1949 he launched the famous “Dior red” that became a fashion classic, inspired several of René Gruau’s most beautiful illustrations and in 1954 became a line of lipsticks. The legendary Dior red has made its spectacular show-stopping appearance in every collection ever since, creating those breathtaking hiatuses the couturier called his “coups de Trafalgar.”

The Esprit Dior exhibition features Dior’s palette of pinks and reds in all its splendour, ranging from the Edith evening dress, the Gourah ensemble and the Diablotine and Cotillon dresses to the pink wool crepe day dress created by Raf Simons for the Haute Couture Collection Autumn-Winter 2012–2013, with its dazzlingly modern structured bustier.

Paris:

The couture house that Christian Dior clairvoyantly opened at 30 avenue Montaigne and where he showed his very first collection, became the international emblem of a Paris reinventing fashion for the world. From 1947 Christian Dior’s collections epitomised the inimitable personality and peerless chic of la Parisienne, for whom Dior created a complete wardrobe for every moment of the day.

For the cocktail hour, he created the “short evening dress” or “robe de petit soir” that became an absolute must for the modern young woman gliding effortlessly from cocktails to a dinner or party. The couturier recommended dark colours and preferably black, stressing that “a little black dress is an essential item in any woman’s wardrobe.”

One of Raf Simons’ contemporary interpretations of this intermediary outfit between day and night is an ensemble with a short dress worn over slimfitting trousers. And for the always sublimely feminine, bold and free-spirited Parisienne, the perfect accessory could only be the Lady Dior bag.

The Dior Garden:

“It was the garden that protected my childhood,” Christian Dior said of the garden of the villa at Granville in Normandy where he grew up. Marvelling at the poetry of this joyous, bountiful nature, he learned every flower’s botanical name by heart, and when he became a couturier he dreamed of peopling the world with “flower-women, with soft shoulders, ample busts, nipped waists and skirts as wide as corollas.” His collections and those of his successors are an ever-renewed ode to flowers.

Another lesson that Christian Dior learned from nature was the imperious necessity for perfume, which he regarded as “the feminine personality’s indispensable accessory” and “the finishing touch to a dress.” And to accompany his first collection in 1947 he created the Miss Dior perfume. He later made his lucky flower, lily of the valley, the dominant note of the Diorissimo perfume, which also inspired the legendary Muguet dress. And his friend the illustrator René Gruau knew better than anyone how to capture the spirit of the Dior perfumes.