Miss Dior

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A persevering woman and member of the French Resistance, Catherine ’s penchant for flowers earned her the nickname “Miss Dior,” which became the scent, and ultimately, the iconic dress “With a Thousand Flowers. The result is Netflix-worthy and the pace page-turning as Picardie presents a woman who appeals beyond the boundaries of Planet Fashion . When she arrived back in Paris in May 1945, having escaped a death march, she was so emaciated, her brother didn’t recognise her; she was too sick to eat the celebratory dinner he’d prepared for her. Justine Picardie's journey takes her to Occupied Paris, where Christian honed his couture skills while Catherine dedicated herself to the French Resistance, until she was captured by the Gestapo and deported to the German concentration camp of Ravensbrück. Clearly, it was very much on the mind of Christian Dior, when he wrote his memoir in 1956, the year before his sudden death.

Picardie spends a lot of time talking about the fashion house history, its founder and everyone else who knew or were believed to have come across Catherine (a. Picardie outlines the activities of the French resistance, with a focus on the women who participated.

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The passionate art of his couture therefore resists being fully dismantled, and examined as a logical, rational craft. The lack of depth relative to Catherine Dior’s life can simply be chalked up to a lack of available detail.As I reread his words in my well-thumbed copy of his memoir, I am struck, for the first time, by the reference to German governesses, and wonder what became of them during the First World War. Dior (Christian Dior Couture and Parfums Christian Dior) is committed to respect the privacy of each and every of our client.

Some of these women were a part of the same resistance unit as Catherine, were tortured by the same people as Catherine, and were with Catherine in the same camps at the same time. The book opens with what information there is available about the Dior family—the mother, Madeleine; the father Maurice; the children, Christian, Jacqueline, Bernard, Raymond, and Catherine. Catherine is gazing at the flamboyant outfit with the faintest hint of a quizzical expression on her face. Picardie ties the title of the book, Miss Dior, into more than just Catherine, as her brother Christian created a perfume with that name, using the scents that most appealed to Catherine as its foundation.Justine Picardie is a contributing editor at Harper’s Bazaar UK and author of Miss Dior: A Story of Courage and Couture ( Farrar, Straus and Giroux), from which this is excerpted. The young trees that were planted, as he described them in his memoir, ‘grew up, as I did, against the wind and the tides. The first of these, and closest to Christian’s heart, was launched alongside the New Look collection, and named in honour of his beloved sister Catherine: Miss Dior. Clockwise from top left: the clifftop garden of Les Rhumbs; Madeleine and Maurice Dior; Les Rhumbs; Madeleine’s mother, Marie-Juliette Surosne; Christian (left) and Raymond in the garden; Catherine. I could not put this book down, such was my admiration for their heroic actions and yet at the end I felt an incredible sadness that their names and experiences are not more widely known.