Christian Dior Tortoiseshell Lucite Magazine Holder Rack, circa 1970
About the Item
- Creator:Christian Dior (Designer),Dior Home (Retailer)
- Dimensions:Height: 10 in (25.4 cm)Width: 11.63 in (29.55 cm)Depth: 3.94 in (10.01 cm)
- Style:Mid-Century Modern (Of the Period)
- Materials and Techniques:
- Place of Origin:
- Period:
- Date of Manufacture:circa 1970
- Condition:
- Seller Location:Atlanta, GA
- Reference Number:Seller: 2W072CEBCCC1stDibs: LU1632242878522
Christian Dior
When Christian Dior launched his couture house, in 1946, he wanted nothing less than to make “an elegant woman more beautiful and a beautiful woman more elegant.” He succeeded, and in doing so the visionary designer altered the landscape of 20th century fashion. Vintage Dior bags, shoes, evening dresses, shirts and other garments and accessories are known today for their feminine and sophisticated sensibility.
Dior was born in Granville, on the Normandy coast, in 1905. His prosperous haute bourgeois parents wanted him to become a diplomat despite his interest in art and architecture. However, they agreed to bankroll an art gallery, which Dior opened in 1928 in Paris with a friend.
This was the start of Dior’s rise in the city’s creative milieu, where he befriended Pablo Picasso and Jean Cocteau. After seven years as an art dealer, Dior retrained as a fashion illustrator, eventually landing a job as a fashion designer for Robert Piguet, and in 1941, following a year of military service, he joined the house of Lucien Lelong. Just five years later, with the backing of industrialist Marcel Boussac, the ascendant Dior established his own fashion house, at 30 avenue Montaigne in Paris.
Just two years after the end of World War II, the fashion crowd and the moribund haute couture industry were yearning, comme tout Paris, for security and prosperity, desperate to discard the drab, sexless, utilitarian garb imposed by wartime deprivation. They needed to dream anew.
And Dior delivered: He designed a collection for a bright, optimistic future. “It’s quite a revolution, dear Christian!” exclaimed Carmel Snow, the prescient American editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar, famously proclaiming, “Your dresses have such a new look.” The press ran with the description, christening Dior’s debut Spring/Summer haute couture collection the New Look. “God help those who bought before they saw Dior,” said Snow. “This changes everything.”
Dior’s collection definitively declared that opulence, luxury and femininity were in. His skirts could have 40-meter-circumference hems, and outfits could weigh up to 60 pounds. They were cut and shaped like architecture, on strong foundations that molded women and “freed them from nature,” Dior said. Rather than rationing, his ladies wanted reams of fabric and 19-inch waists enforced by wire corsets, and the fashion world concurred. The debut got a standing ovation.
In the subsequent decade, Paris ruled as the undisputed fashion capital of the world, and Christian Dior reigned as its king. With the luxuriously full skirts of his New Look, suits and his drop-dead gorgeous couture dresses and ball gowns worthy of any princess, Dior gave women the gift of glamour they’d lost in the miserable years of war.
On 1stDibs, find an exquisite range of vintage Christian Dior clothing, jewelry, handbags and other items.
You May Also Like
Mid-20th Century Italian Mid-Century Modern Magazine Racks and Stands
Brass
Mid-20th Century French Mid-Century Modern Magazine Racks and Stands
Brass
Vintage 1970s Italian Mid-Century Modern Magazine Racks and Stands
Metal, Brass
Mid-20th Century French Mid-Century Modern Magazine Racks and Stands
Chrome
Mid-20th Century Italian Mid-Century Modern Decorative Bowls
Brass
Mid-20th Century Italian Mid-Century Modern Magazine Racks and Stands
Brass
Late 20th Century Italian Mid-Century Modern Magazine Racks and Stands
Brass
Mid-20th Century French Mid-Century Modern Magazine Racks and Stands
Steel, Chrome
Vintage 1970s Italian Mid-Century Modern Umbrella Stands
Metal, Brass
Vintage 1970s Italian Mid-Century Modern Umbrella Stands
Metal, Brass
More From This Seller
View AllVintage 1970s French Mid-Century Modern Magazine Racks and Stands
Resin, Acrylic, Lucite
Vintage 1970s French Modern Magazine Racks and Stands
Metal, Brass
Vintage 1970s French Mid-Century Modern Picture Frames
Acrylic, Lucite, Plexiglass
Vintage 1970s Italian Modern Magazine Racks and Stands
Acrylic, Lucite
Vintage 1970s French Modern Centerpieces
Brass, Metal
Vintage 1970s French Modern Barware
Lucite, Plexiglass, Acrylic
Still Thinking About These?
All Recently ViewedRead More
Jonathan Anderson Makes His Dior Debut with an Audacious Menswear Collection
Andy Warhol and the fashion house’s first collections were among the creative director’s inspirations.
Too Soon for the Return of ’90s Fashion? As If
There's a renewed appreciation for the era's aesthetic, perhaps most notably among millennials seeking authentic, easy style.