ROYAL LINES
A new display of Christian Dior’s peerless creations reveals the relationship between the legendary designer and the British monarchy
When the new Christian Dior exhibition opens at the V&A in February – the largest and most comprehensive ever staged in this country on the legendary designer – it will represent a homecoming. For Dior loved Britain, and had done so ever since he first travelled here as a young man in the 1920s, long before his career as a couturier. ‘I adore the English,’ he declared in his memoir. ‘I love English traditions, English politeness, English architecture, I even love English cooking!’
Dior also admired the British monarchy and the aristocracy, and they were similarly appreciative of him, too. His debut collection – launched in February 1947, and christened the ‘New Look’ by Carmel Snow (the then editor of Harper’s Bazaar, and an endlessly loyal supporter of Dior) – was an immediate sensation, in London as well as Paris. Nancy Mitford was an early fan, swift off the mark in buying herself a ‘Daisy’ suit, and thereafter describing Dior’s signature corseted waistline and full skirts as ‘simply, to my mind, perfect’. By the spring of 1949, Dior had received a royal seal of approval when the 18-year-old Princess Margaret visited his Paris headquarters on Avenue Montaigne, and ordered her first dress soon afterwards: a strapless white tulle gown with a bow at the back. She remained a devoted client, crystallising the glamour of the young British royals in the aftermath of World War II, when the world craved romance after years of austerity; for as Dior observed, ‘she was a real fairy-tale princess, delicate, graceful, exquisite’.
In April 1950, Christian Dior returned to London to introduce his first British fashion show at the Savoy, generating huge excitement (such was the demand for tickets that three presentations were made on the same day, to a combined audience of 1,600 people). The following afternoon, the collection was presented again, in private, at the French Embassy, for members of the Royal family, including Queen Elizabeth, her younger daughter Princess Margaret, and Princess Marina, the Duchess of Kent. According to protocol, the models had practised walking backwards out of the room, so that they did not turn their back on royalty; but in the event, the Queen requested that they twirl around, so that the guests could have a better view of the dresses. Dior, for his part, was as delighted by the Queen as he had been by her daughter: ‘I was instantly struck by her elegance, which I had been quite unprepared for; that, and the atmosphere of graciousness which she radiates. The mauve dress and draped hat which she wore would have been quite inconceivable on anyone else – as it was, on her they looked wonderful, and I felt nothing else would have shown her to such advantage.’
In 1951, Princess Margaret was photographed by Cecil Beaton in the most romantic of Dior’s white ballgowns, to celebrate her 21st birthday. Later, the Princess described this as ‘my favourite dress of all’, and it will be among the precious pieces on show at the V&A, epitomising the long-standing relationship between Dior and the British. The couturier himself died suddenly of a heart attack in 1957, only a decade after his extraordinary inauguration; but his influence on fashion still endures today, as a creative inspiration to all those, like me, who continue to revere him.
‘Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams’ is at the V&A (www.vam.ac.uk) from 2 February to 14 July.