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The Grand salon at Christian Dior has changed little over the years. Located at the top of a sweeping staircase on the first floor of a compact Parisian town house, it has just the discreet neo-Louis XVI air that the brand's late namesake had stipulated 60 years ago. The walls and furniture are white, their expanse broken only by floor-to-ceiling windows and large gilt-framed mirrors that ensure the space is flooded with natural light. The scent of roses, also white and densely packed into vases, fills the air.
"This is where it all happened," says John Galliano, standing back to admire mannequins around the edges of the room, each clad in a suitably iconic design. The first comes courtesy of Dior himself, the second by Yves Saint Laurent for Christian Dior, the third the work of Marc Bohan, the fourth a Gianfranco Ferre ensemble, and finally three looks from Galliano's most recent haute couture collection, celebrating the 60th anniversary of Christian Dior.
It is the stuff of fashion folklore that all of these designers have, in their time, contributed to the history of this great French institution, each making their mark while maintaining the voluptuous and quintessentially feminine signature that remains in place to this day.
"The Dior archive is the heritage of France," Galliano says. "When I was first offered the chance to have a look at it I felt like I'd been given the keys to heaven."
Fashion folklore decrees that when Galliano came over from London in the early 1990s with his great friend and collaborator Steven Robinson, the penniless designer slept on people's floors cobbling together collections for next to nothing, but attracted a clientele from the haute echelons of Parisian society nonetheless.
When he came to the attention of Bernard Arnault, the CEO of luxury goods conglomerate LVMH (Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton), he wasted no time installing the designer as couturier at Givenchy which the group needed to revitalise.
That was in 1995. No more than a year later, Galliano was asked to move to Dior.
If Ferre's appointment to Dior more than 10 years earlier was controversial - he was, after all, an established Italian designer and, therefore, far from homegrown - when LVMH announced the arrival of Galliano, the son of a Gibraltan-born, south London-based plumber father and Spanish mother, mayhem ensued. "It was an outrage," Galliano confirms. "I was an Englishman. They saw me as a punk who had come to destroy their legacy."
Despite the fact this designer was, on the face of it, more of an iconoclast than might be expected, he shared many of the traits of the great house's founder. His love of the female form, the attention he paid to underpinning even the most apparently lightweight garment, the fascination with a basically vintage silhouette re-appropriated to suit the modern age.
In battered trainers, Galliano moves to a curvaceous, wasp-waisted skirt suit meticulously and extremely intricately cut in dogtooth check. The immaculate creation is the handiwork of Dior himself.
"When Dior designed this, we had already seen the small waist and slightly rounded hip that became synonymous with the New Look," Galliano says. "Look at the narrow sleeve, the strictness at the front and this very Parisian flurry - it's known as the cocotte - ending in a box pleat behind. It's a pretty fierce silhouette."
It is also an intensely feminine one, crafted in 1948 for Dior's second season as a couturier under his own name.
The designer moves on to a second mannequin in a sweet, knee-length black taffeta dress. Again, it is narrow at the waist but rather lighter and more pared down than its comparatively stern elder sister. In this instance, a single bow is the only French flourish. The bow was crafted not by Dior but by a young Saint Laurent, the older designer's protege and the man who succeeded him following his death from a heart attack in 1957. This piece, then, with its soft neckline and gentle drape, is surely the ultimate little black dress. It hails from Saint Laurent's first collection for the house of Dior - he designed only two - shown in 1958 and which he produced when only 21 years old.
When the then owner of Christian Dior, Marcel Broussac, decided the unknown Saint Laurent would be stepping into Dior's shoes, it seemed absolutely unthinkable. Saint Laurent was Dior's "preferred disciple" however, and he was not to disappoint, though his reign was to be short-lived.
"The powers that be had been very relieved by Saint Laurent's first collection for Dior," says Claire Wilcox, curator of 20th century fashion at the Victoria & Albert Museum. "The second collection alarmed them. I suppose they were businessmen and they knew they had a golden goose and they wanted to maintain it rather than rock the boat. Nobody really knows what happened, but Saint Laurent was enlisted, had a nervous breakdown, and by the time he was ready to return Bohan was already there."
"This follows the greyhound line which is something Dior created too," says Galliano moving on to a further mannequin, dressed in a Bohan day suit - created in 1988, his final year at the house - again juxtaposing a womanly silhouette with a masculine fabric which had, by that time, become signature Dior. "This also respects the New Look. Darts are suppressed to soften the bust, it's very waisted and it's cut in menswear fabric. The pockets are set in to exaggerate the way models would thrust their hips forward."
If Saint Laurent turned out to be the greatest couturier of the latter part of the 20th century, the more even-tempered Bohan was to carry the torch for Dior for almost 30 years.
"Bohan is often overlooked," Galliano says. "But we shouldn't forget he also worked with Dior as well as alongside Saint Laurent. His big hit was the Slim Line look. A-line and Trapeze [both silhouettes introduced by Saint Laurent] were fine on the runway and in editorials, but women do like to show a more slender figure."
In 1989, the oft-dubbed "architect" of Italian fashion, Ferre, who died earlier this year, took over from Bohan, today in his eighth decade.
"That was the time when the house joined LVMH," says Galliano. They were intent on injecting new life into what had, by that time, become a rather staid status label. "This look takes Dior's famous Bar Suit and crops it to a miniskirt," the designer says, casting his eye over Ferre's typically graphic ivory silk coat and shift-dress combination.
"Three-quarter-length kimono-like sleeves and large lapels are all tucked into a waist-slimming belt."
The aesthetic is just as power-driven as might be expected from this particular designer. With its narrow waist, soft, sloping shoulders and full skirt, it is also, however, once more heavily indebted to the quintessentially feminine New Look.
To understand the impact of Dior's New Look it is important to first consider what came before.
"The conditions of war and the occupation of Paris were the prelude to the New Look," says Wilcox. "[The couturiers] had to constantly negotiate with the occupiers in order to stay open. There were massive fabric shortages. And no pins." Any available metal went towards the war effort.
Dior's biographer Marie-France Pochna describes the appearance of French women at the time thus: "Everything about their attire spelled misery, suffering and shame - clunky shoes with cork wedge heels, a false stocking seam drawn skilfully on to the leg, short skirts - there was no material to spare - with a split to make for easier pedalling, and on top of it all, a harsh, square-cut jacket."
The headwear of the day was, by contrast, whimsical to the point of folly, a fact picked up on by Dior as a prelude, perhaps, to his ability to pre-empt women's sartorial requirements. "Made up of remnants that could serve no other useful purpose, they looked like enormous pouffes flying in the face of the all-pervading misery ... and common sense."
In February 1947, Dior showed his first signature collection - previously he had worked for society couturier Lucien Lelong. Few could have foreseen the uproar that was about to ensue.
"I admit that if I had been asked about my work and what I hoped to achieve on the eve of my first collection, the one that launched the New Look," Dior once said, "I certainly would not have talked about a revolution."
It is one of the great ironies of fashion history that the New Look - as it was named by Carmel Snow of Harper's Bazaar, the most influential fashion editor of the era - was based on nostalgia.
The collection that launched his solo career featured soft-shouldered, waisted jackets that emphasised the bosom, flagrantly eroticising the female form, and the "corolla" line skirt, featuring no less than 20m of fabric.
"It's quite a revolution," said Snow. "Your dresses have such a new look."
Not everyone bought into the style. Coco Chanel called Dior a "madman" for putting women back into corsets. On the streets of Paris, the less privileged attacked those wealthy enough to buy Dior's designs, literally ripping the clothes off their backs.
Despite its detractors, however, the New Look took hold. For the majority of women its retrospective gaiety was hugely desirable. And Dior rose to the challenge of ensuring his designs translated for a broader audience. By 1949, 75 per cent of all French fashion exports bore Dior labels.
"Dior was very clever," says Wilcox. "Although his style was based on nostalgia it was never decorative, his clothes were never excessive, he knew where to stop. The silhouette - New Look or otherwise - is always very smooth and that is achieved by incredible workmanship and great attention to under-pinning.
"Dior was a very sophisticated man, artistically and creatively, he was absolutely sure about proportion. I've never ever seen an ugly Dior dress."
It is now a decade since Galliano took the helm at Dior and under his watchful eye the business continues to go from strength to strength. "What Galliano has done for French couture is to bring the courage of London fashion and combine it with the phenomenal craft skills of the Parisian dressmakers," says Wilcox. "His work represents a fusion between the best of French fashion and the wit of the London art schools."
Independent
