Do you want to know interesting facts about Christian Dior?
Christian Ernest Dior was born on the 21st of January in the year 1905 and died on the 24th of October in the year 1957.
He was a French fashion designer best known for creating his namesake fashion brand Christian Dior, which is now owned by parent firm LVMH and is one of the leading fashion houses in the world.
Christian Dior’s fashion designs and achievements earned praise from different countries because of his detailed and exquisite design ideas for dressing women in his generation.
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Unlike Coco Chanel, who revolutionized women’s dresses in loose coats and trousers, Christian Dior wanted sensuality and power to stay in women’s bodies by emphasizing the beauty of their curves.
Behind all those achievements, who would have thought that Christian Dior went through an extremely bumpy road before reaching success? Let’s take a look at 11 fun facts about Christian Dior below.
Things you'll find in this article
- 11 Interesting Fun Facts About Christian Dior
- 1. The Dior family ran a successful fertilizer business
- 2. Christian Dior was really not into fashion
- 3. Christian Dior was expected to become a diplomat
- 4. His first business was an art gallery
- 5. Christian Dior sold sketches in the streets of Paris to survive
- 6. He was not good at tailoring clothes
- 7. Dior’s first collection was released after the war
- 8. He sought a new look for women
- 9. Feminists did not support his designs
- 10. Yves Saint Laurent worked for Christian Dior
- 11. The manner of Dior’s death was a mystery
11 Interesting Fun Facts About Christian Dior
1. The Dior family ran a successful fertilizer business
Dior was born in Granville, a seaside city in northern France. He was the second of Alexandre Louis Maurice Dior’s five children with Isabelle. Christian’s father was the owner of a prosperous fertilizer company.
The Dior family relocated to Paris when Christian was a young boy, where he grew up.
2. Christian Dior was really not into fashion
This must be a surprising trivia about Christian Dior, the fashion icon.
Akin to Pierre Balmain, Dior had a keen interest in architecture as a child.
Later, he acknowledged that his passion for architecture was the driving force behind his creation of highly structured garments that highlight a woman’s hips and bust.
3. Christian Dior was expected to become a diplomat
An interesting information about Christian Dior is that despite his interest in becoming an architect and his passion for the arts, his degree was in political science.
Dior’s parents persuaded him to enroll at the Paris Institute of Political Studies to study political science.
Giving in to his father’s persuasion, he enrolled in 1925 to begin his political science studies with the expectation that he would eventually work as a diplomat.
4. His first business was an art gallery
Dior used money he obtained from his father to build a tiny art gallery after he graduated in 1928. His father had agreed to give him money on the agreement that their family name would not be displayed above the business entrance.
Dior’s gallery handled the works of famous painters such as Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Max Jacob, and Jean Cocteau during its opening.
In 1931, his mother and brother died, and his father’s business went bankrupt, forcing Dior to shut down his gallery.
5. Christian Dior sold sketches in the streets of Paris to survive
After his gallery was shut down, Dior started selling his fashion sketches to make ends meet.
In 1935, he was hired to illustrate the magazine Figaro Illustré. A few years later, Robert Piguet, a Parisian couturier, employed Dior as a design assistant.
However, when World War II started the following year, Dior served as a French Army officer in the south of France.
6. He was not good at tailoring clothes
Another interesting trivia about Christian Dior is that he was excellent at drawing outfits and accessories, but he was not good at tailoring clothes.
Even before he was asked to work at the Robert Piguet Paris fashion house at the age of 33, his talent supported him for a short period.
Dior discovered when he started his solo career as a designer that the tailoring aspects weren’t his forte. Despite being aware of the procedures on how to sew a dress, he never mastered this expertise.
7. Dior’s first collection was released after the war
On the 12th of February, 1947, in Paris, Christian Dior unveiled Corolle, his debut collection, as Europe recovered from a brutal five-year war.
This name, which translates to “flower wreath,” may be a modest reference to his father’s abandoned family fertilizer business, as Dior hailed from an aristocratic Normandy family that suffered greatly from the Great Depression and World War II.
8. He sought a new look for women
At the first presentation that Christian Dior ever gave, he introduced the world to the “New Look.” This is said to symbolize the end of World War II. This “New Look” featured structured silhouettes, nipped waists, and shorter, billowy skirts.
Additionally, the design was inspired by the period immediately following the war. The dresses were extravagant, with a median of 20 yards of cloth used for each.
The designs created by Dior at the time were ahead of their time. As a result, the fashion house became one of the most famous, admired, and sought-after in the world almost immediately.
9. Feminists did not support his designs
Dior always paid close attention to his creations’ shapes, lines, and forms. This was evident in his designs because he focused mainly on the hips and bust in order to achieve well-proportioned aesthetics.
For instance, the Bar Jacket was one of his most well-liked designs. This particular item, which came from the “New Look” collection, tightened the waist after following the contour of the breast. These works were made to emphasize the female models’ curves and body types.
One of the controversial facts about Dior is that feminists disapproved his collections because they felt that wearing corsets and padding to conform to the standards set by Dior made women uncomfortable.
Christian Dior sought to embrace women’s contours, whereas Coco Chanel intended to free them up.
10. Yves Saint Laurent worked for Christian Dior
When Yves Saint Laurent began his career in the fashion industry in 1955, he was only 19 years old and anxious to get started. He began working for Christian Dior.
He started out in the fashion business as Dior’s apprentice. Still, it did not take much time for the creative genius behind the company to recognize the talent in the young Frenchman. Yves Saint Laurent went on to become the creative director of the House.
In 1957, Christian Dior met with Yves Saint Laurent’s mother to inform her that he had selected her son to follow him as the firm’s creative director when the time came.
Despite the fact that Saint Laurent was only 21 years old at the time, Christian Dior was able to swiftly detect his ability for creating as well as his eye for fashion.
11. The manner of Dior’s death was a mystery
The fashion designer Christian Dior passed away on the 23rd of October in 1957 while on vacation in Montecatini, Italy. According to other sources, he suffered a fatal heart attack after suffocating on a piece of fish bone.
Based on the published obituary, the French fashion designer suffered a heart attack while engaging in a game of cards before passing away.
However, one of Dior’s friends, the Parisian socialite Baron de Redé, stated in his memoirs that the prevalent belief at the time was that the cardiac arrest had been brought on by an intense sexual encounter.
As of this writing, the details behind Dior’s passing have still not been made publicly available.
Hi, I’m Christine – a full-time traveler and career woman. Although I’m from the Philippines, my location independent career took me to over 40 countries and lived in 4 continents in the last 10 years, including France. A self-proclaimed Francophile, I love everything France.