Jeune Fille en Dior

´C´est beau, l´après-guerre´.

I am fascinated about fashion history and histories, not only because I love high-fashion but because of the fantastic social and human stories they connect. As I´ve learned in my beloved history of mentalities originated by the Annales School of Historiography, fashion is part of a wider manifestation of the patterns of a long historical period. Together with manifestations of the material culture as well as spiritual achievements of all kinds - which includes randomly media, theatre, film, literature - fashion is one small yet important piece of the everyday social mirror of an era.

Jeune Fille en Dior by the late multi-awarded Annie Goetzinger with a foreword by Anna Gavalda accounts the post-war fashion environment in France, through a story of a fictional character Clara Nohant. A former journalist, she will become a model for the newly wordlwide successful Maison Dior. 

The fashion is becoming the new war, with dramatic inter-continental frictions and internal ironies and inimities within the French front. Actually, it´s mostly French the language the fashion is speaking at the time. Dior himself is the product of those years. Born in a middle-class family, he graduated Political Science (SciPo) and was expected to be a diplomat. However, he turned his career towards the arts and after the military service he is back in Paris working hard, among other fashion icons of the time like Nina Ricci or Coco Chanel, to design dresses for Nazi wives accompanying their husbands in the occupied Paris. Meanwhile, one of his sisters - who inspired his first Miss Dior - was part of the Resistance movement and will be liberated from Ravensbrück concentration camp at the very end of the war. With his beautiful - as a Greek perfect ratio of proportions - elegant dresses made of fine fabrics and shaped expansively for thin yet normally formed bodies, Dior was the hero of an era looking for his new system of values. In the year of his death - 1957, of a heart attack while playing cards while vacationing in Italy - he appeared on the cover of Time, that in 1938 had on its Man of the Year Edition the criminal Hitler (may his name be erased).

Jeune Fille en Dior is first and foremost a pleasure for the eyes. The illustrations are in full sync with the style and class of fashion illustrations. The story is clear and although focused on the fictional character it connects smoothly to the larger story which, at a general extent, belongs to the European history in itself. The author´s approach both in terms of text and visual makes it a perfect and informative take on the topic. My only objection was the style of the lettering which was a bit annoying for the eyes, my eyes, at least.

I was fascinated by this short lecture as I realized how limited is my knowledge of the details in the field of fashion history in France and elsewhere - besides being able to recognize some top brands. Thus, I am trying to correct this mistake this year, and my next installment of the educational program is a movie about YSL. To be reviewed soon, on a blog near you!

Rating: 5 stars