Mitzvah bricard biography of donald

What did the ‘tyrant of hemlines’ really think of the ladies he dressed? How the designer’s formidable, elegant entourage helped shape the Dior look, by Lindsay Baker.

“Dior doesn’t dress women, he upholsters them,” Coco Chanel once said of her fellow designer Christian Dior.

And of his debut collection, she remarked spikily: “Look how ridiculous these women are, wearing clothes by a man who doesn’t know women, never had one, and dreams of being one.”

This was in 1947, when Dior unveiled his first ever couture collection to the public, with its bell-shaped, petal-like long skirts in taffeta and tulle, lifted busts, softly sloped shoulders and cinched-in waists.

The style became known as the New Look, as it was so markedly different from the preceding pared-back, more androgynous styles – of which Chanel was a key purveyor. Dior’s look was romantic, lavish, elaborate, feminine, and harked back to an earlier Bell