![]() So far, so failed, an observer of the time would have perhaps been justified in saying. Christian Dior's dark days living rough and off a pauper's diet resulted in him contracting tuberculosis and he had to have a year in convalescence. Even though he sold all the stock of the gallery - including Picasso and Braques - he lost his apartment and had to sleep on a friend's floor - as John Galliano also did frequently in London in the '90s before decamping to Paris and re-inventing the Dior image. It all came to an end with the Great Depression, which ruined his father and not only forced the closing of the gallery but also made it essential for Dior to find a way of earning a living, no matter how small. It was the sort of gallery where friends dropped in, stayed, but never bought - unaware that their presence might inhibit potential customers too nervous to spoil their fun by actually entering the premises. He also opened an art gallery, funded by his father, with the proviso that the family name should be not be used in connection with it. Dior appeared to be an intellectual lightweight dipping and diving into anything new and avant-garde, including politics: he briefly called himself an anarchist, even visiting communist Russia where he was repulsed by the totalitarian rule, poverty and lack of idealistic social structure. ![]() He was sent to study in Paris but, in probably the first example of what later flowered into a will of iron, Christian spent all his time on the fringes of the bohemian creative world of Jean Cocteau, Max Jacob, Salvador Dalí and, especially, Christian Bérard - the illustrator who was to play a significant role in the success of Dior’s first collection.īut before that, there were hurdles to be cleared. ![]() His father, in one of these misdirected actions that can often blight the career and even life of a son not understood, wished Christian to join the Diplomatic Corps. Like so many couturiers, he adored his mother and her Belle Époque way of dressing was fixed in his memory forever. As a boy, he lived in his own little world, amused by “anything that was sparkling, elaborate, flowery or frivolous,” he wrote many years later, but his greatest love was for flowers and plants. But, of course, it was neither as simple nor unexpected as that.Ĭhristian Dior was born on 21st January 1905 in Granville, Normandy, where his family lived a comfortable bourgeois life supported by a successful fertiliser company. In fact, the first 41 years of his life can be construed as those of a dilettante drifter - always on the edges of fashion and the arts but with nothing to presage the unprecedented flowering of the perfectly formed fashion statement of his first collection that seemed to have been plucked from the air. PARIS, France - Christian Dior's back door entrance into the world of French high fashion was almost unique.
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