Christian Dior and the New Look

Christian Dior was born in a seaside town called Granville on the Normandy coast of France in 1905. In 1910, the family moved to Paris, but still visited Granville for summer vacations. It was Christian Dior’s dream to be an architect, but his father insisted he receive an education at the Political Science University in order to obtain a degree in Political Science. Despite earning a degree in politics, Dior had a passion for the Arts. Due to family tragedy, Dior helped his family through hard times by selling his fashion sketches to haute couture houses, and with these designs he found a new job as assistant to couturier, Robert Piquet.

After becoming an assistant at the fashion house, the start of World War II in 1939 prompted Christian Dior to serve as an officer until France surrendered. After his term of enlistment ended, he relocated to a farm in Province, France with his father and a sister. Soon after, he was again offered a job in Paris by another couturier, Lucien Lelong, a man trying to encourage the Germans to resume couture trade.

For the duration of World War II, Christian Dior dressed the wives of the Nazi officers and French collaborators. At the end of the war, most of France was destroyed and clothes, coal and food were very limited. In essence, rebuilding France to her former standards encouraged many new businesses to open, thereby providing new opportunities, fashion being one of them. Christian Dior was invited, by a longtime friend he had known since his days in Granville, to restore a struggling clothing company owned by Marcel Boussac, called ‘Philippe et Gaston’.