Shanghai hosts Christian Dior exhibition

The Dior garden The Haute Couture ateliers are the House of Dior’s creative heart. It is always here that each collection begins, where the couturier’s sketches become toiles, the cotton canvas sample garments made by the Flou (Dressmaking) and Tailleur (Tailoring) ateliers, which the artistic director then modifies until his initial vision reaches its final form and the choice of fabrics is made.

It is the consummate skill of these unique ateliers at 30 avenue Montaigne, each staffed by a “first hand,” “second hands” and seamstresses, that bring the creator’s vision to life. Entrusted to their peerless expertise, dreams take form, dreams whose limits are pushed ever further back with each new season. Dior Haute Couture creations are veritable works of art and can require up to a thousand hours of work. Glorifying femininity, as Christian Dior wished, they offer women ever more beauty and happiness.

The same extraordinary knowledge and skills continue to be nurtured by all the arts and crafts that make up the Dior universe – Haute Parfumerie, Haute Maroquinerie, Haute Joaillerie, Haute Horlogerie – all of whom are working together to achieve the same perfection.

The Dior ateliers:

The Haute Couture ateliers are the House of Dior’s creative heart. It is always here that each collection begins, where the couturier’s sketches become toiles, the cotton canvas sample garments made by the Flou (Dressmaking) and Tailleur (Tailoring) ateliers, which the artistic director then modifies until his initial vision reaches its final form and the choice of fabrics is made.

It is the consummate skill of these unique ateliers at 30 avenue Montaigne, each staffed by a “first hand,” “second hands” and seamstresses, that bring the creator’s vision to life. Entrusted to their peerless expertise, dreams take form, dreams whose limits are pushed ever further back with each new season. Dior Haute Couture creations are veritable works of art and can require up to a thousand hours of work.

Glorifying femininity, as Christian Dior wished, they offer women ever more beauty and happiness. The same extraordinary knowledge and skills continue to be nurtured by all the arts and crafts that make up the Dior universe – Haute Parfumerie, Haute Maroquinerie, Haute Joaillerie, Haute Horlogerie – all of whom are working together to achieve the same perfection.

Diors & Artists:

As a young man, Christian Dior wanted to become an architect, but his parents dissuaded him from pursuing this dream. Instead, aged only twenty- three, he opened two art galleries in succession and, with his avant-garde sensibility and unique clairvoyance, he showed some of the future legends of 20th-century art, including Dalí, De Chirico, Calder, Giacometti, Miró, Klee, Ernst and Bérard.

And from then on Christian Dior was constantly surrounded by artists, poets and composers. When he created the House of Dior, it was his vision and sense of construction and colour that immediately established him as a towering figure of haute couture. Many of his creations, such as the Picasso, Braque and Matisse designs, were tributes to his artist friends. Combining his architectural rigour and sublime sense of colour, Dior created a world of enchantment and splendour for women.

Ever-faithful to the memory of its founder, the House of Dior is continuing to maintain very close ties with the art world, as shown be these dresses and Raf Simons’s first Haute Couture collection.