What is beauty ?
The title looks like a subject of the baccalaureate of philosophy but I reassure you, it’s not.
Sometimes designers are hated then loved, loved then are unfashionable, for no apparent reason. Behind these mysterious comings and goings of fashion, is it possible to find an objective measure of beauty?
Beaudelaire will help us on this article to find an answer to this question.
Beauty according to Beaudelaire
“ he goes, he runs, he seeks. What is he looking for? For sure, this man […], this solitary, gifted with an active imagination, always traveling in the great desert of men, has a higher goal than that of a little strolling, a more general goal, other than the fleeting pleasure of the circumstance. He looks for this something that we will allow to call the modernity; because it does not present itself of better word to express the idea in question. It is a question, for him, of extract from fashion what it can contain of poetic in the historical, to draw the eternal from the transitory “ The painter of the modern life Baudelaire.
Baudelaire sees beauty in daily life. According to him, only the painter is able to seize what he calls the modernity. From this new notion, he draws the essence of the beauty which is permanent.
Symbol of the zeitgeist and timeless style, the house of Dior has established itself and remained over the years the symbol of elegance in the world. To understand the longevity of the label, I will analyze the brand through its origins and then with two designers who have adapted the Dior look to our time.
Christian Dior The basis of a good style
To build a timeless style, you need a good foundation. At Christian Dior, this foundation was laid in 1947 by its eponymous founder with the New Look. This was an instant hit among the public, with its first collection, marking the end of the war and the return of luxury.
This new look is characterized by rounded shoulders, a high and emphasized chest, a thin and fitted waist, a long and puffed skirt, gloves, a hat and pumps. For 10 years Christian Dior will enrich his repertoire of outfits by offering a different silhouette for each collection
To better understand how Dior has remained the symbol of good taste through the ages, I will focus my analysis on the bar suit.
Le tailleur bar, The basis of the new look
The bar suit was originally introduced in 1947 in the “ligne corolle”. This look consists of a cream shantung* jacket with rounded basques*. The style is completed with a flared pleated skirt, hat and thin, tapered shoes.
Shantung = fabric made of wild silk with a slightly fluted appearance. It is called wild silk because the food given to the silkworms is different from the one usually given.
Basques = lower part of the jacket that starts at the waist
Joh Galliano at Dior, a style more audacious and frivolous
John Galliano is certainly the most well known and the most controversial Dior designers. He started working for the Parisian fashion house in 1996, at a time when globalization was in full swing and the world was speeding up. In order to meet a new demand from emerging countries of ostentatious luxury, Haute Couture houses were recruiting eccentric designers able of giving freshness to their brand.
This is not the period of fashion that I like the most. Because of this new system, the designers at the head of luxury houses were obliged to make 6 collections per year, and they had to manage their personal line and capsule collections. This has led to excesses like the suicide of Alexander McQueen in 2010.
I think John Galliano was the symbol of this crazy fashion that is now criticized. However, he remains a talented designer.
Dior Fall Winter 1997
The setting sends us straight to a palace in China. At the beginning of the show, the doors open and the first model arrives towards the public. The suggestive poses follow one another on a music of nightclub. At John Galliano the outfits are very short, almost provocative. He does not hesitate to play on the periods of times to build his shows and make traditional outfits very sexy. Often it works brilliantly but sometimes it causes a scandal (see the “homeless” show he did in 2000)
Tailleur Bar by John Galliano
The John Galliano woman is sensual and this suit highlights that. Unlike the original model of the bar suit, the skirt is very short. The hat covers the entire top of the face, revealing only the model’s full lips. It reminds a little bit of a young European bourgeois who would be traveling in China.
The designer’s fashion shows are real shows pleasing to an increasingly rich world that fantasizes about French luxury. However, one could see this opulence as a masquerade that hides the melancholy of the Western world*.
* this is actually the point of view that Caroline Evans defends in her book Fashion at the Edge, in which she analyzes the fashion of the 90s. Characterized by various upheavals such as the oil crises, the appearance of globalization and the advent of the Internet, the West underwent at that time an identity crisis that was reflected in fashion.
Maria Grazia Chiuri for a more engage fashion ?
In 2016 Maria Grazia Chiuri took over the creative direction of Dior. Her appointment is an event because she is the first woman to be appointed to this position in the Haute Couture house.
The designer proclaims her feminism from her first show where the famous T-shirt “we should all be feminist” is worn by the models.
Dring Spring/Summer 2017 By Maria Grazia Chiuri
For her first show, the creative director decided to play it sober in terms of decor. Regarding the colors, few risks also this first season with a set of monochrome essentially white and black. As for the outfits, we are very far from the extravagance of John Galliano, but the message behind his parade is just as well.
Chiuri’s Dior woman is strong and independent. The models parade around with pride and heads held high. These women look ready to fight, some even wearing bibs.
Tailleur bar by Maria Grazia Chiuri
The interpretation of the suit is more natural, more adapted to the life of an active woman. The jacket is worn open with a white T-shirt and leather boots that replace the thin shoes of the original outfit. There is little frivolity at Maria Grazia Chiuri, the clothes adapt to the silhouette of women and not the other way around.
Without diminishing the prestige of Dior’s iconic pieces, the designer makes the luxury house’s outfits more suitable for the daily life of a modern, emancipated and committed woman.
And the beauty in all this?
We are coming to the end of the article and a sense of frustration is holding me back. Even through Baudelaire’s definition, I find it hard to say that Dior captures some form of timeless beauty that it extract from modernity. I can see that the brand has preserved its identity over time, but I don’t think that implies it is beautiful. Nike is also a company that has kept its identity since its creation, but can we say that all its clothes are beautiful? Honestly, I can’t decide.
SOURCES
- Understanding fashion: from business to culture, Chapter 1, IFM Mooc,
- « Qu’est-ce que la soie shantung ? », Howard’s Paris
- « Le tailleur Bar de Dior, une pièce mythique qui a marqué l’histoire de la Mode »,Luxe Infinity, Quentin, 24 Octobre 2017
- « Go globlal », dernier épisode du documentaire Fashion !, Arte, Olivier Niklaus, 2012
- « Fashion, les collections du Kyoto costume institute, une histoire de la mode du XVIII au XX siècle »,p444 l’âge de l’innovation de la haute couture — La mode durant la deuxième moitié du XXe siecle, Taschen, 30 septembre 2002
- The painter of the modern life Baudelaire.
