Word: dior
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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From these sketches, Dior and his staff select the "line" for the season-some 150 to 200 models. They are assigned to various workrooms, which make up "toiles" -replicas in plain muslin...
Each dress is reviewed by the patron himself, sitting in a straight chair, clad in a long white butcher's smock. With a long, gold-tipped cane, Dior points and criticizes, orders a bow changed, a seam moved. Scattered through the collection are the five or six models which are called, because they may prove to be disasters, the "Trafalgars"-the dresses which are the most extreme and will make headlines or covers in the fashion magazines. Dior deliberately plans them to startle and shock, thinks of them as trial straws in the wind, to be developed...
...opening approaches, nerves grow tense in the studios. Assistants throw tantrums, models faint from exhaustion, Dior himself bursts into tears of emotion. On opening day, he takes refuge in the models' dressing room, a madhouse of half-clad models, hurrying dressers, seamstresses making last-minute adjustments. As each girl hurries back in, gets out of one gown and dons a new one ("girdle-to-girdle" time is calculated at three minutes), Dior questions her anxiously about the reaction, kisses her warmly if her model has been a success...
...last the applause ripples out, and Dior timidly parts the curtain to face the onrushing ladies...
...Ephemeral. Dior has no illusions about the permanency of his creations. "We are placed under the sign of the ephemeral. Rigorous construction, precision of cut, quality of execution alone separate us from the travesty of fancy dress." But he is nonetheless serious about his ephemeral trade. "In a machine age," he says, "dressmaking is one of the last refuges of the human, the personal, the inimitable. In an epoch as somber as ours, luxury must be defended inch by inch...