Miss Dior
A Story of Courage and Couture
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4.0 • 23 Ratings
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
“Remarkable” —Hamish Bowles, Vogue
The overdue restoration of Catherine Dior's extraordinary life, from her brother's muse to Holocaust survivor
When the French designer Christian Dior presented his first collection in Paris in 1947, he changed fashion forever. Dior’s “New Look” created a striking, romantic vision of femininity, luxury, and grace, making him—and his last name—famous overnight. One woman informed Dior’s vision more than any other: his sister, Catherine, a Resistance fighter, concentration camp survivor, and cultivator of rose gardens who inspired Dior’s most beloved fragrance, Miss Dior. Yet the story of Catherine’s remarkable life—so different from her famous brother’s—has never been told, until now.
Drawing on the Dior archives and extensive research, Justine Picardie’s Miss Dior is the long-overdue restoration of Catherine Dior’s life. The siblings’ stories are profoundly intertwined: in Occupied France, as Christian honed his couture skills, Catherine dedicated herself to the Resistance, ultimately being captured by the Gestapo and sent to Ravensbruck, the only Nazi camp solely for women. Seeking to trace Catherine’s story as well as her influence on her brother, Picardie traveled to the significant places of Catherine’s life, including Les Rhumbs, the Dior family villa with its magnificent gardens; the House of Dior in Paris; and La Colle Noire, Christian’s chateâu that he bequeathed to his sister.
Inventive and captivating, and shaped by Picardie’s own journey, Miss Dior examines the legacy of Christian Dior, the secrets of postwar France, and the unbreakable bond between two remarkable siblings. Most important, it shines overdue recognition on a previously overlooked life, one that epitomized courage and also embodied the astonishing capacity of the human spirit to remain undimmed, even in the darkest circumstances.
Includes Black-and-White Illustrations
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Picardie (Coco Chanel) offers an evocative yet thin biography of Catherine Dior (1917–2008), the youngest sister of couturier Christian Dior and the inspiration for Miss Dior perfume. Raised at the family's estate in Normandy, Catherine moved with her brother to Paris in 1936. After the fall of France in 1940, the siblings lived in a village near Cannes, where they gardened and socialized with other exiled Parisians. In 1941, while shopping for a battery-operated radio to listen to Gen. Charles de Gaulle's broadcasts from London, Catherine met French Resistance leader Hervé des Charbonneries. The two fell in love, and Catherine became an active Resistance member, compiling reports on German operations and passing them to British intelligence services. Captured and tortured by the Gestapo in July 1944, she was held at the Ravensbrück and Markkleeberg concentration camps and survived a death march in April 1945. She hardly ever spoke of her wartime experiences, however, and Picardie's narrative, though it weaves in the stories of other captured operatives and intriguing asides about perfumery, cooperation between French fashion houses and the Nazis, and other topics, suffers from the lack of firsthand information about its subject. Readers will find that the essence of this remarkable woman remains elusive.
