'There is no other country in the world, beside my own, whose way of life I like so much,’ swooned Christian Dior in his memoir. A fortune-teller told the superstitious French couturier that he would travel widely, and by the time Dior died in 1957, aged 52, he had toured the world. Yet there was one place with which he was smitten. ‘I dote on Yorkshire pudding, mince pies, stuffed chicken and, above all, I worship the breakfast of tea, porridge, eggs and bacon.’
Dior’s love affair with Britain ran deeper — make that chicer — than stuffed chicken and porridge. As a young boy growing up in the seaside town of Granville, Normandy, Dior daydreamed of the isles across the water, while his mother kept an English flower bed in their garden. He persuaded his parents to allow him to visit London for several months in 1926. He was 21 years old. ‘That year in London was more beautiful than ever,’ he wrote. ‘I adore the English, dressed not only in the tweeds which suit them so well, but also in those flowing dresses in subtle colours.’ Later, back in France, he drove an Austin Princess Vanden Plas, the same model of British car as the Queen.
‘He was an Anglophile,’ says Oriole Cullen, curator of the V&A’s new exhibition, Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams. ‘His social circles in London were fun and irreverent and more accepting than the bourgeoisie background he grew up in.’
The museum’s 11-room blockbuster, which opened on Saturday, is based on Paris’s Musée des Arts Décoratifs’ wildly popular 2017 show of the same name. The V&A’s take offers a new focus on Dior in Britain and London, featuring garments from its archive as well as never-before-seen pieces donated from the wardrobes of Dior’s British devotees. Altogether, the exhibition showcases 230 pieces of haute couture by the designer and his successors, from Yves Saint Laurent to John Galliano and Maria Grazia Chiuri — the largest-ever collection of couture to be shown the UK.
Centre stage in the British show is Princess Margaret’s 21st-birthday ballgown: a cappuccino organdie dress, with a soft asymmetric neckline that slips off one shoulder and a dramatic seven-layer skirt pulled in to a 21.5-inch waist. When Buckingham Palace commissioned Dior to design it in 1951, he asked the Princess whether she felt like ‘a gold or silver person’. She said gold, but instead of embellishing the gown with gold, Dior opted for raffia and pressed straw ‘sequins’. Cecil Beaton, who photographed the royal portrait, found the dress ‘a disappointment’ but noted that the Princess liked it because — her words — ‘it’s got bits of potato peel on it’.
The designer first met Princess Margaret when she visited the Paris couturiers on a European tour in 1949, aged 18. Dior’s was the only house she ordered from: a strapless white tulle gown with a vast satin bow. Dior exclaimed that she was a ‘real fairy princess: delicate, graceful, exquisite’ — however, her mother, the Queen, was apparently not amused and suggested that the royal dress maker, Norman Hartnell, raise the neckline of the dress.
A year later, Dior presented his first fashion show in Britain to great excitement. Held at the Savoy, it was so in-demand among Britain’s post-war, glamour-starved women that three showings were arranged to accommodate an audience of 1,600. The next morning, Dior and his models smuggled the gowns, rustling, out of the service door of the Savoy to the French embassy, where a secret presentation had been arranged for Princess Margaret, her mother the Queen, and the Duchess of Kent. Thereafter, the princess became a regular face at Dior’s large-scale shows at Blenheim Palace, organised for charity by the elegant Duchess of Marlborough.
The designer described himself as a ‘royalist at heart’ and adored the style of the British aristocracy. The feeling was mutual. Nancy Mitford was one of the first to visit Dior’s Avenue Montaigne salon in 1947 after he unveiled his debut collection of nipped-in waists and full, calf-length skirts — a silhouette later christened the ‘New Look’. Mitford wrote from Paris: ‘My life has been made a desert of gloom by the collection which at one stroke renders all one’s clothes unwearable.’
Not everyone in post-war Britain was as enthralled with Dior, however. After the austerity of rationing, journalists bemoaned the luxuriously long hemlines and action groups formed to campaign for short skirts. In 1953, the Daily Express ran a competition asking readers to write in explaining why they disliked the Dior collection. Mrs Elsie Rashleigh, a woman in her 50s, won for a complaint about hemlines. The prize? £50, or a suit custom-made by Dior. Despite the length, she chose the latter, which is hanging in near-pristine condition in the V&A exhibition today.
Dior quickly opened a London wholesale business, selling reworked couture pieces from Paris as cheaper ready-to-wear, and then, in 1961, a boutique and atelier on Conduit Street followed. The commercially astute designer admired British manufacturing and established licensing deals here. ‘For a French couture house to open in London in the post-war period was unusual,’ says Cullen. ‘It was a real statement that Dior wanted to be here.’ Soon the designer’s admirers this side of the Channel could wear an outfit designed by the house of Dior, manufactured completely in Britain.
When he died suddenly of a heart attack, just 10 years after the launch of his brand, Dior was operating out of dozens of outlets across the UK. This unusually wide reach for a Parisian couturier was not just down to the business of fashion, but the enduring affiliation Dior felt with the UK since he was a young boy.
Today, a fondness for this country is still kindled at the house. During a private tour of the V&A show opening Maria Grazia Chiuri echoed Dior’s thoughts as a 21-year-old: ‘London to me represents freedom and individuality. It is a place where you can express yourself, be a punk, be yourself.’ There’s no doubt Dior would approve.
Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams is on at the V&A until 14 Jul (vam.ac.uk). Get tickets here.
