Miss Dior: A Story of Courage and Couture (from the acclaimed author of Coco Chanel)

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This substantial late-nineteenth-century villa, positioned high above the Normandy town of Granville, overlooking the English Channel, was the childhood home of Christian Dior. Photograph: Collection Christian Dior Parfums ‘Not a fancy dresser’: Catherine Dior, aged 20, in Paris, 1937. Instead, Catherine would become associated with the scent of Miss Dior, a perfume launched at the same time as the couture brand. In the beginning, there were five Dior siblings: Christian, Catherine, Bernard, Raymond, and Jacqueline. The prisoners were made to walk despite exhaustion and illness, threatened by dogs and armed SS guards.

Miss Dior | The Independent The incredible story of the real Miss Dior | The Independent

Yet as we spoke, I found myself asking him more and more questions about the mysterious Catherine, who appeared to have rarely referred to her involvement in the Resistance, nor her time in Germany. It is surprisingly quiet this morning in the grounds, perhaps because of the damp weather, although the museum has several dozen visitors who have come to see a new exhibition, dedicated to Princess Grace of Monaco, and displaying clothes designed for her by Christian Dior. The entrance to 10 Rue Royale is as impressive as the rest of the street, but on the other side of the immense gateway there is a warren of staircases and hidden doorways.This meant nothing to Anne, until Catherine explained that Lili had been ‘in the same réseau [section] in the Resistance as I, but for much longer’. A gripping story in which Justine Picardie brilliantly contrasts the cruel Old World of wartime France with the hopeful New World epitomised by Christian Dior’s New Look: all centred round his sister Catherine Dior, a Resistance heroine.

Miss Dior: A Story of Courage and Couture - Goodreads

If she’d been found with the radio listening to De Gaulle, she would have been arrested and imprisoned. Designed with its signature bow bottle cap and chic pink tones, uncover the collection of Miss Dior perfumes for women by Dior.Christian knew something of the perils that his sister faced, and remained steadfast in his protection of her, but he may not have been aware of the full extent of Catherine’s activities in the network. And then I wondered how Catherine had navigated the arena of Parisian fashion, with its brittle etiquette, guarded cliques, and whispered gossip. That same day, his wife Lotka was captured at their home in Nice (her parents had already been deported from Paris to Auschwitz the previous year). According to a Christian Dior confidante, the name of the perfume came from Catherine, somewhat accidentally.

Miss Dior: A Story of Courage and Couture by Justine Picardie Miss Dior: A Story of Courage and Couture by Justine Picardie

This, then, was the environment in which Christian Dior found himself when he joined Lucien Lelong in Paris, a city that had been conquered by the Nazis, and a business that was subjugated to the will of the Third Reich.

As soon as Hervé des Charbonneries received the news, he rang Catherine to give her a coded warning: ‘We will dine, tomorrow evening, with your brother in Paris. Catherine only talked to me about it on one occasion, when she said she had been in a camp in Germany. And despite Madeleine Dior’s strictness with the children, Catherine made a brief yet intriguing reference to her mother ‘closing her eyes’ and giving them the freedom to create two flowerbeds, one in the shape of a tiger, and the other a butterfly.

Miss Dior by Justine Picardie, review: the haunting story of Miss Dior by Justine Picardie, review: the haunting story of

The author and journalist Germaine Beaumont, writing in the winter of 1942, observed that a couture dress was ‘such a little thing, so light and yet the sum of civilizations, the quintessence of equilibrium, of moderation, of grace . Born on 2 August 1917, Catherine lost her mother, Madeleine Dior (to septicemia following an operation), at the age of 14. One of the earliest and most effective of the Resistance groups operating in France, the F2 network had initially been established in July 1940 by three Polish army intelligence officers who had found themselves stranded in Toulouse, behind enemy lines, after the German invasion. Though 12 years his junior Catherine (1917-2008) was close to Dior in temperament and shared particularly his devotion to flowers.By going to get a radio to listen to Charles De Gaulle’s banned broadcasts from London on the BBC, that in itself was an act of Resistance. It was as if the hermetic world of haute couture had no concern for a woman such as Catherine Dior, or for the suffering that she had endured; nor even as to whether her experiences had played a part in her brother’s legendary vision of fashion and femininity. A member of the Resistance, Catherine had been arrested in July 1944, brutally tortured, and deported to Ravensbrück concentration camp. It was only a chance encounter, when she was twenty-three, that finally led to her discovering the truth.