Hypnotic Poison

When Christian Dior launched his couture house, in 1946, he wanted nothing less than to make “an elegant woman more beautiful and a beautiful woman more elegant.” He succeeded, and in doing so the visionary designer altered the landscape of 20th century fashion. Vintage Dior bags, shoes, evening dresses, shirts and other garments and accessories are known today for their feminine and sophisticated sensibility.

Dior was born in Granville, on the Normandy coast, in 1905. His prosperous haute bourgeois parents wanted him to become a diplomat despite his interest in art and architecture. However, they agreed to bankroll an art gallery, which Dior opened in 1928 in Paris with a friend.

This was the start of Dior’s rise in the city’s creative milieu, where he befriended Pablo Picasso and Jean Cocteau. After seven years as an art dealer, Dior retrained as a fashion illustrator, eventually landing a job as a fashion designer for Robert Piguet, and in 1941, following a year of military service, he joined the house of Lucien Lelong. Just five years later, with the backing of industrialist Marcel Boussac, the ascendant Dior established his own fashion house, at 30 avenue Montaigne in Paris.

Just two years after the end of World War II, the fashion crowd and the moribund haute couture industry were yearning, comme tout Paris, for security and prosperity, desperate to discard the drab, sexless, utilitarian garb imposed by wartime deprivation. They needed to dream anew.

And Dior delivered: He designed a collection for a bright, optimistic future. “It’s quite a revolution, dear Christian!” exclaimed Carmel Snow, the prescient American editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar, famously proclaiming, “Your dresses have such a new look.” The press ran with the description, christening Dior’s debut Spring/Summer haute couture collection the New Look. “God help those who bought before they saw Dior,” said Snow. “This changes everything.”

Dior’s collection definitively declared that opulence, luxury and femininity were in. His skirts could have 40-meter-circumference hems, and outfits could weigh up to 60 pounds. They were cut and shaped like architecture, on strong foundations that molded women and “freed them from nature,” Dior said. Rather than rationing, his ladies wanted reams of fabric and 19-inch waists enforced by wire corsets, and the fashion world concurred. The debut got a standing ovation.

In the subsequent decade, Paris ruled as the undisputed fashion capital of the world, and Christian Dior reigned as its king. With the luxuriously full skirts of his New Look, suits and his drop-dead gorgeous couture dresses and ball gowns worthy of any princess, Dior gave women the gift of glamour they’d lost in the miserable years of war.

On 1stDibs, find an exquisite range of vintage Christian Dior clothing, jewelry, handbags and other items.

Today, antique and vintage bracelets are versatile and universally loved accessories that can add polish and pizzazz to any ensemble.

Bracelets were among the jewels discovered to have been buried with Pharaoh Tutankhamun when his tomb was unearthed in 1922, and wrist and arm bracelets were allegedly worn by Queen Puabi in Sumer, southern Mesopotamia. But preceding the adornments of Ancient Egypt and elsewhere, the people of prehistoric times likely wore the decorative accessory, fashioning it from shells and fish bones. When the Bronze Age allowed for more durable materials and semiprecious stones to be incorporated into jewelry, bracelets became a treasured symbol of wealth.

In the thousands of years following the debut of the world’s first bracelets, the artistry behind this common accessory has only broadened, with designers at popular jewelry houses growing more venturesome over time. David Webb looked to nature for his Animal Kingdom bracelets, and for her best-selling bracelets and more at Tiffany & Co., Elsa Peretti would frequently do the same. From bangles to tennis bracelets, the modern age offers plenty of options.

Internationally acclaimed bracelet designs have on occasion become powerful symbols of status, style and, in the case of Cartier's iconic design, love. The Cartier Love bracelet can be found on the wish list of most jewelry lovers and on the wrist of some of the world’s biggest stars. Its arrangement of mock screwheads and distinctive functionality — it was initially locked and unlocked with an accompanying vermeil screwdriver — is an enduring expression of loyalty, unity and romance. (Do you know how to spot a fake Cartier Love bracelet?)

While the Love bracelet has played a role in the skyrocketing popularity of cuff-style bracelets, they are far from the only glamorous option for collectors. Make a statement with an Art Deco design, a style that sees all kinds of iterations fitted with studded cuffs, one-of-a-kind shapes and dazzling insets. A chunky vintage gold bracelet in the Retro style will prove eye-catching and elevate any outfit.

One of the best things about bracelets, however, is that you never have to choose just one. Style icon Jacqueline Kennedy stacked her Croisillon bracelets — designed by Jean Schlumberger for Tiffany & Co. — with such frequency that the ornate bangles were eventually dubbed “Jackie bracelets” by reporters. Contemporary silver pieces can easily complement each other, rendering a layering of luxury almost a necessity.

Find a diverse collection of bracelets that you can sort by style, stone cut and more on 1stDibs.