Dior and Saint Laurent Play Power Games in Paris

Dior and Saint Laurent Play Power Games in Paris

On Tuesday something funny happened on the way through the Tuileries.

At one end of the Grand Allée — the vista stretching from the Louvre and the I.M. Pei glass pyramid on one end to the obelisk of the Place de la Concorde on the other, leading up the Champs-Élysées to the Arc de Triomphe and further to La Défense and its own Grande Arche — a new monument of sorts had materialized. Blocking the view from either end, the giant white tent appeared like a beached behemoth, dominating the landscape.

A single word on the front justified its position: Dior.

Prepandemic there were always fashion week tents in the Tuileries. But they were historically relegated to the fringes, so as not to interrupt the flow of human traffic, or to get in the way of the sweep of history represented by this particular view. Not any more.

As a metaphor and a bid to be part of the power continuum, it doesn’t get much clearer than that.

Outside the tent, screaming hordes clogged the entire dirt-covered courtyard, squeezing past any attempt at social distancing and trampling all Covid protocols, fighting to catch glimpses of Jisoo from the South Korean girl group Blackpink, a Dior ambassador. Guests glanced nervously at one another.

From the Lady Dior to the Saddle Bag, a History of Dior Handbags

But the cult of Dior handbags as we know it now—the Lady bag, the Saddle bag, the Book tote—should really be traced to Marc Bohan, the second designer to take the helm of the fashion house following Monsieur Dior’s untimely death from a heart attack in 1957. (One Yves Saint Laurent was next in the line of succession, after which Bohan arrived in late 1960.) In 1967, Bohan drummed up the Oblique monogram, in which the four letters of Dior appear tossed together at an italic tilt and then stacked upon each other over and over until they form a diagonal line. It was two years before the world first saw it; look 42 from the spring 1969 collection featured a positively modish model wearing a woolly coat, bug-eye specs, and a boxy shoulder bag bearing the would-be iconic monogram. Since then, John Galliano splashed the Oblique all over everything from itty-bitty bikinis to his signature giddy-up Saddle bags, and current Dior creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri has applied it liberally to handbags of all shapes and sizes. And no Dior handbag history would be complete without the style made famous by the most regal of Miss Diors—a certain Princess Diana, for whom Dior named the Lady Dior bag.

Since the swish of the New Look skirt was heard around the world in 1947, the Dior maison has given us plenty to talk about. The most famous Dior handbag histories, below.

Tracing Christian Dior’s Evolution, From the Postwar ‘New Look’ to Contemporary Feminism

In the aftermath of World War II, French fashion designer Christian Dior spearheaded a new era of style with his extravagant, ultrafeminine creations. Now, writes Miles Pope for Vanity Fair, a new exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum in New York is chronicling the House of Dior’s 75-year history, “masterfully blend[ing its founder’s] artistry and legacy.”

Titled “Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams,” the 22,000-square-foot show features more than 200 haute couture garments, photographs, videos, sketches, accessories and other items, some of which are on public display for the first time. As Hamish Bowles reports for Vogue, “Designer of Dreams” features garments by both Dior and his successors at the fashion house, including Yves Saint Laurent, Marc Bohan, Gianfranco Ferré, John Galliano, Raf Simons and current artistic director Maria Grazia Chiuri.

For the new exhibition, curators converted the museum’s Beaux-Arts Court into something straight out of the pages of Vogue. Designs on view “exemplify … the French couturier’s fabled silhouettes, including his groundbreaking ‘New Look,’ which debuted in 1947,” according to a statement. “… The exhibition also brings to life Dior’s many sources of inspiration—from the splendor of flowers and other natural forms to classical and contemporary art.”

In addition to tracing the brand’s evolution, “Designer of Dreams” includes dresses inspired by 18th-century fashions, a “colorama” display of Dior accessories and a gallery outlining Dior’s dressmaking process. Compared with the original version of the show, which debuted at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 2017, the New York iteration is more focused on the present, dedicating a significant amount of space to Chiuri’s creations.

“Chiuri is, of course, the first woman to helm Dior, which is a big deal, but the exhibit doesn’t really explore what that means beyond … catchphrases” like “We Should All Be Feminists and “Would God Be Female,” writes fashion critic Vanessa Friedman for the New York Times.

In Paris, Friedman adds, “I actually learned something about Dior the man, who started his career as a gallerist. And it was convincing in presenting the way he established the vocabulary of the house: the extravagant yet trim femininity of the ‘New Look’; his lush color palette; his fascination with flowers, filigree and tarot.”

Born into an affluent family in Granville, France, in 1905, Dior was one of the leading designers of the 20th century. He trained under couturiers Robert Piguet and Lucien Lelong before establishing his own fashion house in 1946. Over the next several years, Dior developed his trademark “New Look,” which featured lower waistlines, smaller shoulders, defined waists and voluminous skirts—a marked departure from wartime padded shoulders and short skirts.

“What was heralded as a new style was merely the genuine, natural expression of the kind of fashion I wanted to see,” the designer once said. “It just so happened that my personal inclinations coincided with the general mood for the times and thus became the fashion watchword. It was as if Europe had tired of dropping bombs and now wanted to let off a few fireworks.”

Writing for Deutsche Welle in 2017, Jan Tomes argued that Dior’s vision of “radical femininity” appealed to the postwar public’s sense of nostalgia. He “didn’t want to create everyday clothes for the pragmatic woman of the fast-moving century but rather sell a dream of the good old days, when women could afford to be extravagant and deliberately glamorous.”

Dior’s relatively conservative designs attracted criticism from those who accused him of “taking away women’s newly attained independence by lacing them up in corsets and making them wear long skirts again,” per Deutsche Welle. As fashion designer Coco Chanel commented, “Dior doesn’t dress women. He upholsters them!”

Despite these critiques, Dior’s designs remained immensely popular both during his lifetime (he died of a heart attack in 1957) and in the decades after. But the fashion house’s legacy isn’t limited to its founder, Chiuri tells Booth Moore of Women’s Wear Daily.

She adds, “I hope people see how the history of the brand was shaped by so many, because sometimes when we speak about Dior, we don’t realize how many designers worked at this brand, and it’s very important because it’s not only the history of Mr. Dior, but also Yves Saint Laurent, Marc Bohan and John Galliano.”

“Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams” is on view at the Brooklyn Museum in New York through February 20, 2022.