Miss Dior: A Story of Courage and Couture (from the acclaimed author of Coco Chanel)

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Tracing the wartime paths of the Dior siblings leads Picardie deep into other hidden histories, and different forms of resistance and sisterhood. She discovers what it means to believe in beauty and hope, despite our knowledge of darkness and despair, and reveals the timeless solace of the natural world in the aftermath of devastation and destruction. The Dior family in their garden, c.1920.Catherine sits in the middle, between her parents. Behind them, left to right, Christian, Jacqueline, Bernard and Raymond. Secret Resistance figure who fought the Nazis and inspired brother’s timeless scent: The incredible story of the real Miss Dior

Miss Dior: A Wartime Story of Courage and Couture - Faber

The overdue restoration of Catherine Dior's extraordinary life, from her brother's muse to Holocaust survivor When the French designer Christian Dior presented his first collection in Paris in 1947, he changed fashion forever. Dior’s “New Look” created a striking, romantic vision of femininity, luxury, and grace, making him—and his last name—famous overnight. One woman informed Dior’s vision more than any other: his sister, Catherine, a Resistance fighter, concentration camp survivor, and cultivator of rose gardens who inspired Dior’s most beloved fragrance, Miss Dior. Yet the story of Catherine’s remarkable life—so different from her famous brother’s—has never been told, until now. I close my eyes, searching for Catherine, trying to envisage her as a small child in the garden, just outside, playing hide and seek. Catch me if you can, whispers the imaginary child, and then her voice is gone, and I can hear only the sound of the wind murmuring in the chimney, sighing in the empty fireplace beside me. It had been a difficult decision for Christian to leave Catherine in Provence in 1941. ‘I disliked intensely the idea of returning to a humiliated and beaten Paris,’ he wrote in his memoir. ‘I also had to consider the future of our agricultural venture if it was left under the sole supervision of my sister.’ He does not explain what, exactly, gave him the impetus to resume his previous career in fashion; but in any event, he found a job working for Lucien Lelong, who was also the president of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture, the official trade federation for the industry, and as such, responsible for negotiating with the Nazi authorities in Paris.With unparalleled access to the Dior family homes and archives, Justine Picardie’s research into Catherine’s courageous life shines a new light on Christian Dior’s legendary work, and reveals how his enchanting ‘New Look’ emerged out of the shadows of his sister’s suffering.

Miss Dior by Justine Picardie | Waterstones Miss Dior by Justine Picardie | Waterstones

Wholehearted French support for the ‘aryanisation’ of the fashion industry was by no means uncommon, as a feature of the ‘cleansing’ activities imposed by the Third Reich and the Vichy regime. ‘France will be saved and will be rebuilt by elements that are intrinsically her own; the essentials are French blood and the French brain,’ declared the writer François Ribadeau Dumas in November 1940, the same month that the Jewish couturier Jacques Heim was forbidden to do business in Paris. ‘The moment . . . the more than questionable Jewish houses disappear, the atmosphere of the Parisian luxury trade will be purified!’

As subtle as it is fragrant, Justine Picardie’s book casts a strong spell that lingers.” —Benjamin Taylor, author of Here We Are and The Hue and Cry at Our House In the course of researching this book, I have been fortunate to meet Liliane’s son, Nicolas Crespelle, who was the much-loved godchild of Catherine Dior. We met in Paris for tea one day, at a café in the same street as the Dior archives, and he appeared to me as quintessentially Parisian as his mother did to Gitta: distinguished-looking, urbane and unruffled, despite having arrived by bicycle. Nicolas was very generous in sharing what he knew, while also emphasising how much had been kept secret from the post-war generation. He was born in February 1947, in the same week as the launch of the New Look collection, and his sister Anne in 1945. ‘No one told us about the war,’ said Nicolas. ‘Catherine only talked to me about it on one occasion, when she said she had been in a camp in Germany.’ All he knew about his mother’s role, at least while she was still alive, was that she had ridden a bicycle during the war; but whenever she started to talk about why she had spent so much time on these cycling expeditions, his father would say that it ‘wasn’t interesting’. Miss Dior: A Story of Courage and Couture, from the bestselling author of Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life, paints a portrait of the enigmatic woman behind the designer Christian Dior, his beloved younger sister Catherine, who inspired his most famous perfume and shaped his vision of femininity.