Word: dior
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Dresses for Men. The chitchat on the boulevards was of Balmain's lavish, fur-trimmed evening cloaks, of Balenciaga's cocoon-like capes and Givenchy's balloon-like cocktail dresses. But wherever gores and gussets were discussed by experts, Christian Dior's name led all the rest. Mindful of the dismal failure of 1954's sad-sack flat look, Dior had turned out a collection of slinky new gowns that puff up the bosom, pinch down the rump, swoop low around the neckline. Exulted the New York Herald Tribune's Eugenia Sheppard: "Dior...
...biggest (1,200 employees) and most prosperous of Paris' 820-member couturiers' protective association, Designer Dior, 62, is a shy, balding Norman with a birdlike face and trencherman's paunch. Son of a wealthy chemical manufacturer, he started out to be a diplomat, instead opened a picture gallery, where he helped launch the career of Salvador Dali. Switching to fashion during the Depression, Dior first made his mark as a hat designer. After World War II service as an enlisted man, he was one of Lucien Lelong's top designers when Textile Tycoon Marcel Boussac decided...
...Dior to work in a mansion at 30 Avenue Montaigne. There, as L'Express Fashion Editor FranÇoise Giroud once remarked, diffident Christian Dior was "unknown on the 12th of February, 1947, famous on the 13th." The overnight event that made Dior: the New Look...
Guerrilla Warfare. Though Dior made headlines by dropping hemlines, he has made his fortune with the help of clever merchandising and Boussac backing. He branched into perfume, sports clothes, stockings, opened New York and Venezuelan branches to make high-priced ready-to-wear dresses (Dior's 1955 gross: $18 million). Today there are eight wholly owned Christian Dior companies and 16 firms that make Dior products under franchise...
...they say: 'Poujade is not so bad; he is not against us at all. He is against our enemies, the big trusts.' " The big trusts themselves are interested. Textile Tycoon Marcel Boussac, biggest of French businessmen, owner of race horses and the fashion house of Dior, sent an emissary to sound out this new political phenomenon. "He tried to pull the worms out of my nose," was Poujade's characteristically inelegant reaction...