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House of Dior | Eugéne | c. 1949

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House of Dior | Nuit D’Aout | c. 1954

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Yves Saint Laurent for Dior | “Bal Masque” from “Ligne Trapèze” | c. 1957

This dress was worn by The Duchess of Windsor. Yves Saint Laurent was highly influenced by the grand, bell shaped ball gowns of the 1860s.

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Dior | “May” | c. 1953

Dior reveled in the paradox of the natural and the sophisticated. The most telling example is his frequent self-presentation, not as a man who symbolized the authority of French taste, but rather as a simple gardener, farmer, and mill owner. In “May,” flowering grasses and wild clover are rendered in silk floss on organza. This “simple” patterning of meadow-gone-to-weed is composed of the tiniest French knots and the meticulously measured stitches of the hand embroiderer, suggesting that for Dior, it was not only that beauty resides in the most rustic, but also that the most successful artifice is a beguiling naivété. (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

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Yves Saint Laurent for House of Dior | “L’Eléphant Blanc” | c. 1958

Creating the trapeze silhouette for Dior, Saint Laurent has a rigid understructure veiled under a fly-away cage. A boned corset anchors the dress but allows the delusion of a free swinging cone. Seeking a shape for independence, though still tethered, the “Eléphant Blanc” dress also employs a shimmering embroidery on net that requires a finishing flourish to the thread work on a transparent surface. Thus, in both surface decoration and in structure, Saint Laurent gained the effect of ethereal, bouyant freedom while retaining the structure of the couture. (The Met Museum)

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Christian Dior | Zemire, La Ligne H | c. 1954

The dress shown here is called Zemire and was part of Dior’s H-line collection of Autumn/winter 1954-5. It is one of his most historical designs, echoing the shape of riding-habits, and it was successful. The original model in grey silk satin was shown to Princess Margaret at Blenheim Palace in 1954, and it appears in several magazine features. A ready-to-wear version was licensed to Susan Small, a British company that made ‘line-for-line’ copies for Harrods. It sold for 22 guineas, a fraction of what a made-to-measure version would have cost.

This ensemble was commissioned by Lady Sekers, wife of the British textile manufacturer, and made in an innovative man-made fabric produced by the Sekers company.

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Jean Demarchy Illustration for Dior | c. 1955 | ink and gauche