1961 Marc Bohan for Christian Dior Haute Couture Cocktail Dress
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1961 Marc Bohan for Christian Dior Haute Couture Cocktail Dress
About the Item
The initial anticipation to the little known Marc Bohan's debut was not very high but the show was a triumphant, rousing success. Eugenia Sheppard said it best, " I felt like a cat before a bowl of cream".
We certainly felt like a cat before a bowl of cream when we saw this cocktail dress from Marc Bohan's first collection for Dior. It is simply one of the most beautiful and the most beautifully constructed dresses that we have seen at RARE vintage.
From Marc Bohan's debut collection, the Slim Line, this is a beautiful crepe and matte silk satin black cocktail dress with a slightly flared skirt. This flare actually became known as the Bohan Flare. The empire waist slims and emphasizes a womans body, in the tradition and work of Christian Dior. The unique craft of couture and Marc Bohan's technical mastery is clearly evident in the fit and design of the dress. We promise you that no woman, ourselves included, can be zipped into this dress and not feel like the most elegant and desirable creature in New York, Paris, London or whatever city she may be in.
- Designer:
- Brand:
- Dimensions:Marked Size: 4/6 (US)
- Place of Origin:
- Period:
- Condition:Excellent.
- Seller Location:New York, NY
- Reference Number:1stDibs: U090623435
Christian Dior
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.
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