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

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Christian Dior’s friend and colleague at Lelong, Pierre Balmain, gives a vivid account in his memoir of the customers they were obliged to see, and Dior’s own sardonic response. ‘The clientele at Lelong during the Occupation consisted mainly of wives of French officials who had to keep up appearances, and of industrialists who were carrying on business as usual. Apart from Madame Abetz, the French wife of the German Commissioner, few Germans came to us. Nevertheless, there was still a somewhat unreal, strange atmosphere about the showings. I remember I was standing with Christian Dior behind a screen, scanning the audience awaiting the first showing of 1943, the women who were enjoying the fruits of their husbands’ profiteering. “Just think!” he exclaimed. “All those women going to be shot in Lelong dresses!”’

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

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Catherine’s dearest friend, Liliane Dietlin, was also in F2; and it is thanks to another of Liliane’s friends, the acclaimed Austrian-born investigative journalist Gitta Sereny, with whom I myself worked many years ago, that I know something of what Gitta described as ‘the unsung hero­ism’ of these women in the Resistance. General de Gaulle had called for French men – soldiers, sailors and airmen – to join him in the battle against Nazism. Yet just as many women rallied to the cause of freedom, some of them very young and without any military training. As Gitta recalled in a tribute to Liliane, written soon after her death in February 1997: ‘I can barely think of Lili as old; to me she was always and remained throughout her life as I saw her when we first met – the epitome of the young Parisienne.’ Exceptional . . . Miss Dior is so much more than a biography. It’s about how necessity can drive people to either terrible deeds or acts of great courage, and how beauty can grow from the worst kinds of horror.’

Miss Dior, A Story of Courage and Couture by - Booktopia Miss Dior, A Story of Courage and Couture by - Booktopia

The juxtaposition of terrible shadows and dazzling light is one of the great strengths of this book . . . [Miss Dior] is a very personal, very passionate book.” —Artemis Cooper, Times Literary Supplement

Despite his sacrifice, more arrests were to follow: on 29 March 1944, Jacques de Prévaux himself was apprehended by the Gestapo in Marseilles, along with several other members of F2. That same day, his wife Lotka was captured at their home in Nice (her parents had already been deported from Paris to Auschwitz the previous year). When the Gestapo arrived at their apartment, Lotka had just enough time to entrust the couple’s baby daughter into the care of their nanny, who safely hid her for nine months before taking her to Jacques’s brother and sister-in-law in Paris after the Liberation. Dior bought La Colle in 1951, four years after his debut “New Look” collection made him the apple of every fashion editor’s eye – and an extremely wealthy man. He could have chosen to live anywhere by then but he settled on here, a decision I can’t help but think, on reading Justine Picardie’s memorable new biography of Catherine, was motivated by a fierce desire to keep his favourite sibling close.

Miss Dior by Justine Picardie | Faber Long Read: Miss Dior by Justine Picardie | Faber

verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ 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. While her extreme bravery during the war is not in doubt, there’s little for Picardie to go on even in that periodI did not hear Catherine’s voice; the blue skies did not open. But the scent of the roses seemed to contain within it a question: was it conceivable that so much beauty had arisen from the ashes of the Second World War? And if so, what message might Catherine Dior have for us today, even if she never said another word. Once I step inside the inner courtyard, the noise of the city becomes less insistent, and within the apartment itself there is a sense of quiet. But knowing, as I do, that Catherine Dior was being hunted by the Gestapo when she sought refuge here in 1944 casts the apartment in a different perspective. Looking out of its windows, across the rooftops of Paris, it becomes evident that there is only one way in and out; so while you could feel safe, you might equally be trapped, with no effective escape route.

Miss Dior | Perfume | Dior - Boots Miss Dior | Perfume | Dior - Boots

There are points in this book when it feels traitorous to be considering skirt lengths in the same breath as gas chambers, antitheses that, on the whole, Picardie navigates with the intelligence and sympathy you would expect. “There should be a vast gulf between them – a chasm…” she writes, “and yet they coexist.” In a further sign of the remarkable silence that reigned for so long in France on the subject of the war, Jacques and Lotka’s baby daughter Aude – who was adopted after their death by her father’s brother and sister-in-law – was told nothing about her real parents’ identity and their heroic service in the Resistance. It was only a chance encounter, when she was twenty-three, that finally led to her discovering the truth.

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. Picardie is a former editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar magazine, a former fashion columnist for this paper and the author of an acclaimed biography of Coco Chanel. Fashion is in her bones, but while I wish I could tell you that Miss Dior is about swishing silks and mirrored salons, it isn’t. These certainly vein the book, but come to seem brittle intrusions in an otherwise eerie and distressing story. At first, as I began to explore Catherine’s history, and realized that she was more or less invisible to Christian’s acolytes, I felt angry on her behalf. And then I wondered how Catherine had navigated the arena of Parisian fashion, with its brittle etiquette, guarded cliques, and whispered gossip. Was she received with respect when she came to see her brother’s couture collections at Avenue Montaigne, amidst the chattering swarm of journalists, editors, celebrities, and socialites? Did they even recognize her as Christian’s sister, or appreciate her association with Miss Dior? I enjoyed reading Miss Dior, though Picardie can be a bit wafty; she’s always communing with spirits. It’s horribly fascinating to me that while Dior waited for news of his sister – was she dead or alive? – he was working on the Théâtre de la Mode, an exhibition comprising a series of doll-sized mannequins dressed in couture outfits (a publicity stunt by the Paris fashion industry that would raise a million francs for war relief). The book is full of things like this: unlikely, even bizarre, shafts of light that have you blinking, given the darkness all around. It’s also beautiful; her publisher has done her proud. But it comes with so much padding. A long account of the relationship of Wallis Simpson and Edward VIII, for instance, cannot be justified by the fact that the former was a client of Dior (their connection with Catherine is nonexistent). Like a dress by some wilfully edgy label – think JW Anderson, or the wilder shores of Cos – its constituent parts seem not to go together. The sleeves don’t match the bodice, and there’s a gaping hole where there really shouldn’t be one.