Colour pioneer How Christian Dior understood and embraced grey’s eternal appeal
The French fashion designer may be synonymous with the post-war ‘New Look’, but we argue he’ll be forever associated with elegant pale grey
Christian Dior was a superstitious man. He visited two mystics – Madame D and ‘Grandma’ – before setting up his own couture company in March 1946. Both had presentiments that Dior should take the plunge. (‘Grandma’, in a trance, apparently assuring him: ‘This house will revolutionise fashion!’) Loins thus girded, he took the lease on 30 Avenue Montaigne in Paris and set about creating an atelier from scratch. The look was crucial. Together with Victor Grandpierre, a surrealist photographer friend of Mr Dior’s, they designed a space that was neoclassical, luxurious, quintessentially French, and very, very grey.
Thereafter referred to as ‘Trianon’ or ‘Montaigne’ grey, this was an especially evocative shade. A touch warmer, with a more violet cast than classic French grey, it recalled the gravel of the driveway that wound up to Dior’s pink-plastered childhood home. (He would return to this colour combination again and again in his work.) Nevertheless, when paired with the whiteedged panelling and round-backed Louis XVI armchairs that became Dior-boutique
TO MR DIOR IT WAS THE ULTIMATE NEUTRAL. AN UNFUSSY, PRACTICAL COLOUR, IT ACTED AS
A FOIL FOR SHOWIER DETAILS AND DESIGNS
signatures, it harked back to a Francophile golden age while still retaining a certain modern chic. This was savvy. In 1946, the year after the end of WWII, Paris was in desperate need of things to feel good about, and a scheme that subtly boosted national pride would certainly do no harm.
But there were also practical reasons that ‘Trianon grey’ became a Dior mainstay, as much in his couture as in his interiors. It was, to him, the ne plus ultra, the ultimate neutral. An unfussy, practical colour, it acted as a foil for showier details and designs. In a showroom this was useful: it let extremely feminine creations in scarlet or blush take centre stage. But it was also used to balance out the more outré and exuberant details, making them seem more refined. Over-the-top gowns in ruched tulle accentuated with bows, an exceptionally hard sell in pale pink or yellow, were all elegance amidst this poised monochrome. So too, this balancing act worked in interior schemes. The effect of alcoves decorated with swagged pink silk curtains, or fussy gilt chandeliers were at once held in check against austere grey walls. In Mr Dior’s own home, walls covered in an eye-popping pink chinoiserie were satisfyingly tempered with soft grey curtains and masculine, leather-covered chesterfields.
Indeed, over the past 75 years, ‘Trianon grey’ has been deployed so liberally at Avenue Montaigne and become so emblematic of this couturier’s maison that it is often referred to, simply, as ‘Dior grey’. It remains unknown whether Madame D or ‘Grandma’ saw that coming.