History
Early Life: Christian Dior two words that define couture, fashion but most important of all it defines luxury ready to wear. Dior was born on January 21, 1905 in Granville, a town on the coastline of Normandy, France. He was the second of five children born to Alexandre Louis Maurice Dior and Isabelle Cardamone, the other children were Raymond, Jacqueline, Bernard and Ginette. Dior came from a very wealthy family, his father owned a highly successful fertilizer manufacturer called Dior Frères. In 1911, when he reached the age of 6 his family moved to Paris, however, on summer vacations they returned to Normandy. In the book Christian Dior: The Man who Made the World Look New the author, explains the close relationship Dior had with his mother, he was the only child of the five to acquire his mother’s gardening skill. This caused his siblings to call him mother’s pet and to recall that their mom was more authoritarian on the girls than on the boys. Dior expressed his passion for art and interest in becoming an architect, moreover, his father disagreed with this idea and placed pressure on him into enrolling at the École des Sciences Politiques. In 1925 he began his career in Political Science and graduated in 1928. Upon graduation he planned to open a small art gallery and it was possible with the financial help of his father, provided to him under the condition that the family name would not appear anywhere above the gallery door. Few years later, this gallery opened, he carried works from famous artist such as: Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau and Max Jacob. In 1931 during the Great Depression, Dior experienced rough moments in his life, his mom and his older brother had passed away and the fertilizer manufacturer his father owned was going through a financial crisis, therefore, he was forced to close the gallery.
Fashion Life: Christian Dior's entry into the fashion world initiated in a very modest way; selling his fashion sketches outside his home for 10 cents apiece. His first steps in fashion began when he was employed by Robert Piguet as a design assistant. In 1940, Dior was called to the military and was asked to serve in the French army as an officer, he returns to Paris from the military and is then employed by designer Lucien Lelong's in his design house. Here is where he learned how to design, becoming one of the primary designers, and acquiring all the abilities possibly needed to start a design house of his own. During World War II one of the design houses that remained open for artistic and economic reasons was Lucien Lelong's design house. Here Dior and Pierre Balmain designed dresses for the wives of Nazis and French collaborators.
The Dior Fashion House: Christian Dior throughout the years had acquired the knowledge and the skills that were necessary to open his own design house. Supported by Marcel Boussac a cotton-fabric industrialist, on December 8, 1946 the Dior fashion house...
