I EXPLORE DIOR
November 20, 2025
The photo accompanying this piece is of me, taken in Nov 2017 at the National Gallery of Victoria. I was there to experience the ‘House of Dior: Seventy Years of Haute Couture‘ exhibition, as you know if that’s how you arrived here or will know if you click the latter link.
In this photo I am standing in front of the October 9, 1957 cover of The Australian Women’s Weekly featuring the Christian Dior house mannequins. The cover is vintage cool and I love it, but my intent was an insider joke for myself. And other Women who don’t tick the Eurocentric narrative’s boxes.
It is interesting that the more ‘colonised the Colonised Person is, the more… able to walk in the real world and the reality world with equal aplomb a person is, the more cultured, sophisticated and worldly and frankly more intelligent… the more that Person gets shunned by the prevailing narrative.
This is why we build our own platforms. The greed of others breed ways the rest of us can use for good. But I digress.
As shared in the Dior at NGV in 2017 article, the Australian Women’s Weekly was how Christian Dior brought his brand to Eurostralia.
In her very first column in November 1945, trailblazing fashion facilitator, Mary Hordern wrote in this 2024 article in The Australian Women’s Weekly.
“My ambition … is to give women the best ideas from the world’s greatest designers. Few can buy model frocks, but every woman wants her clothes to make the most of her Personality. […] “A certain amount of adaptation is necessary to make overseas designs suitable for wear in this country. I hope my pages will supply Australian women with ideas for clothes, highlighting the latest fashion trends and yet entirely suitable for our climate and way of life.”
The article also says;
[…] “Dior knew the value of the association. Australian women, it turned out, were going to be instrumental in his global success.[…] “Living in the sunshine of a comparatively new country unscathed by war, Australians have a cleaner, brighter outlook and are more receptive to new ideas than the tired people of Europe,” Dior would say of Australia…”
[…] In 1950, Dior took a trip to Australia, reported The Sydney Morning Herald, to study “the fashion needs of the Australian woman”, while also visiting leading Australian wool mills for materials to take back to Paris. He would use both as inspiration for his collection the following year.”
” – ‘How The Weekly brought Dior to Australia‘, [June, 2024] The Australian Women’s Weekly
Watch the July 1948 spring fashion parade at David Jones in Sydney here, considered to be the first complete Dior collection to be shown outside of Paris.
Read the original article published in this October 9th, 1957 issue, ‘Dior on Dior. An Autobiography‘, here. The cover is here in case you do want to start from the start, and oh this Qantas ad is dreamy.
Another article from the Weekly the week before, published on Wed Oct 2, 1957, ‘First Dior Parades for Australia‘, here.
I am not not a Christian Dior fan, as a journalist with a special interest in fashion, I deeply appreciate Dior the House’s contribution to shaping history [yes pun intended] and its continuing significant instances in the Euroworld. I just don’t connect with any era Dior designs as expressions of my personality, even though I am a fan of YSL the OG who took over the Atelier when Mr Dior passed away in October 1957.
[Watch ‘1957: Inside the Fashion House of Dior‘]
I view Dior garments objectively, as stunning works of wearable art that are also almanacs of the times. Particularly the now iconic Bar Suit [part of the legendary ‘Corolle‘ line, which debuted in February 1947] which may have been conceived by Mr Dior but was mainly designed and constructed by Dior’s tailleur atelier Pierre Cardin. Not just “padded”.
[A note; most designers don’t necessarily have to know how to construct a garment, but they do have to know how to create it and how to guide a team, they are Creative Executive Organisers of a creative team. The Creating is hard, it’s labour, a mental pregnancy. And the physical side of bringing an idea to fruition then completion it is the ‘rearing‘.]
Cardin first started out designing costumes for his friend the already renowned avant-garde artist [the then 57yo] Jean Cocteau, for his classic 1946 film “La Belle et la Bete” / Beauty and The Beast, yes that one. See the film here on YouTube, it is deserving of its Classic with a Capital C label.
The then 24yo Cardin had studied architecture [at his father’s insistence] and a little bit of acting in Paris, which is how he met Cocteau, before going back to his calling- dressmaking and design. Cardin started his professional dressmaking with WOMEN designers, who were the main designers of Womenswear before the men took over.
Released in post war 1947, the Bar Suit -named after Dior’s favourite hang at the Plaza Athenée*- was an instant hit. Carmel Snow**, the -should be known but isn’t- legendary editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar apparently wrote to Dior, “Dear Christian, your dresses have such a new look“, thus immortalising the famous phrase associated with Dior’s 1947 collection. The New Look.
Not everyone was happy with Dior’s “new look”…
Excerpts from ‘Dior’s New Look Sweeps Europe and America‘ by Maxine S Theodoulou, 2023.
Coco Chanel, herself of dubious motives but an interesting, feisty and talented Woman who had enjoyed the freedom of financial safety*** and the privilege of freedom, felt that “Dior’s New Look embodied all the worst aspects of clothes designed for women by men.
She disliked Dior’s fashions so much that she re-entered the fashion business, and critics agree that she produced her best work during this period. Chanel’s actions raised an important question: Should men be the final, if not the sole, arbiters of what should be created for women to wear?”
[…] “Some who disliked the New Look formed “Just a Little Below the Knee” clubs […] urging others to join them in the fight for freedom in manner of dress. Dior, however, pursued his own vision of women. He saw them as flowers, and he thought that their legs should be shrouded in mystery. […] some critics claimed that he imagined a carefree and happy life that had never really existed. Moreover, Dior expected women to shape their bodies to his clothes.”
The New Look with its armour like structure both constrained and exaggerated a Woman’s form but Dior said that he created his 1947 collection as a backlash to the austerity and lack of everything during war times [when has Europe not been at war?].
“I designed clothes for flower-like women, clothes with rounded shoulders, full feminine busts, and willowy waists above enormous spreading skirts. I wanted my dresses to be constructed like buildings, molded to the curves of the female form, stylizing its shape” Dior said about his 1947 ‘New Look’.
In his “Little Dictionary of Fashion,” from 1954, he clarified: “After women, flowers are the most lovely thing God has given the world.”
In vases, churches and cages….
Full article in The Stylander’s YEARBOOK. [XX/12]
Sandhya – PublisherEXTRA INFO
* [For SATC fans; this is where Carrie jumped up and down with glee while looking at that “hideous” tower, wearing a Sonia Rykiel ensemble. S6, Ep19: An American Girl in Paris, (Part Une), February 2004… and… The Sonia Rykiel Striped Floral Sweater, which debuted in the designer’s Fall 2003 collection, is again available for purchase, in 2025. No, we are not affiliated with anyone, I simply like sharing information.
**[Snow discovered the more well known and equally impressive Diana Vreeland in 1936, after noticing her dancing across a crowded room. This is quite a marvelous story, please do read this excerpt from ‘A Dash of Daring: Carmel Snow and Her Life in Fashion, Art, and Letters‘ by Penelope Rowlands. 2005.]
The Mend
Ally. Always Was Always Will Be