There is no more quintessentially Parisian fashion house than Dior. Yet Monday night’s show in New York drew upon the brand’s longstanding connection with a very different city, and was strewn with monochromatic renderings of both the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty.
That distinctive silhouette which announced the label’s arrival to the world in 1947, with its nipped-in jacket and almost preposterously full skirt, may have been conceived by a Frenchman. Yet it was an American woman, Carmel Snow, the editor of Harper’s Bazaar, who put Christian Dior’s vision into words, declaring his first collection to be “a new look!”
American women quickly proved among the designer’s most avid customers, including one Marlene Dietrich. The brand even featured in the German-American film
