Couture

• Dior’s haute couture collection remains a historical moment for post-war fashion, and lends its name to Apple’s new ten-part series.
• The drama explores the state of Parisian couture in the final year of the second world war and the years that followed through the lives of important designers.
• This includes Dior and his contemporaries Coco Chanel, Pierre Balmain, Cristóbal Balenciaga, Lucien Lelong, Hubert de Givenchy and Pierre Cardin.

French fashion during wartime

• Once Nazi forces invaded, Paris and its international fashion markets were effectively cut off from the rest of the world.
• As fashion designers were forced to limit the amount of material they used, unnecessary decorative additions such as ruffles and pockets became expendable.
• Instead, wartime couturiers turned to embroidery and beading for decoration – trends that continue to characterise haute couture today.

The rival ‘American look’

• Its biggest rival was the American ready-to-wear apparel industry, an aspect of the story this new series dramatises to great effect.
• Though the American industry also faced fabric rationing during the second world war, it was not occupied, and the restrictions weren’t as debilitating.

Dior’s beacon of hope

• Dior’s 1947 Carolle collection, was renamed the “new look” at first viewing by American fashion editor Carmel Snow.
• Snow claimed it represented the creation of a new femininity – which Dior would later call “the golden age of couture”.
• Rather, it celebrated the end of the grim years of wartime trauma, misery and lack.

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Elizabeth Kealy-Morris does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.