In 1947 Christian Dior rocked the fashion world with his New Look which dominated post war fashion and firmly secured the name of his house in the minds of the public and the industry. He drew on historical models of femininity and utilized the unique skills of Parisian haute couture in textiles, embroidery, cutting and sewing techniques to produce stunning designs that captured the new mood of optimism after the war. Dior also designed and marketed ready-made luxe lines and broke new ground by creating and controlling innovative licensing agreements for all Dior products, from perfume to stockings, jewellery, bathing suits and even men’s ties.

Based on new research, this absorbing and beautifully illustrated book examines the seminal years of Christian Dior, 1947–57, from a truly international perspective.

The jewellery firm Süddeutsche Gold- und Haar-Bijouterie, founded in 1907 by Heinrich Henkel and Florentin Grosse, experienced its first successes with costume jewellery made of bronze, aluminium, wood, bakelite and galalite. Renamed Henkel & Grosse, the firm soon established its first business contacts to the US. In the early 1930s it began working with the fashion labels Lanvin and Schiaparelli in Paris as well as with Harrods in London and Saks in New York. The company was awarded the diplome d’honneur for their designs in 1937 at the “Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la vie Moderne” in Paris. Since 1955 Henkel & Grosse worked together with Christian Dior and for fifty years held a license to produce and distribute Dior jewellery worldwide.

With regard to Henkel & Grosse’s own jewellery lines, the firm always maintained its independence, thereby setting their own creations apart from Dior jewellery. For example, the line Grosse Bijoux, which was expanded in the 1960s to include the collections Grosse Sterling und Grosse Gold – with fashion always dictating their design. The enterprise, led by four generations of the Grosse family, had at its zenith over 600 employees and a worldwide distribution. Dior and Grosse costume jewellery was designed in Pforzheim. Produced in Pforzheim and in the US, later also in Asia, it stood for modern design and technical innovation. In 2005 the family withdrew from the business and the firm became part of the Dior group.

The first comprehensive monograph on Henkel & Grosse with numerous illustrations of jewellery from Grosse and Dior. Its exciting history is portrayed against the backdrop of the fashion created by the great couture designers of the twentieth century.

Victoire de Castellane, the designer of Dior Joaillerie, presents her collection of Fine Jewellery on the Belladone Island – an imaginary island conducive to the growth of Belladonna, a toxic plant whose essence was used as eye drops by Italian women during the Renaissance to dilate their pupils – dilated pupils being one of the signs of sexual arousal. The plant kingdom inspired the names of the jewels in their collection, plants which were part of the imaginary ancestral herbarium and reminiscent of the magic formulas of bewitching elixirs – Reina Magnifica Sangria, Poisono Misterius Spinella, Fleuro Poisonus Spinella, Paradisea Coeur Secretus, Carnivora Fluora Eternita, Dracula Spinella Devorus, Grani Opalia Devorus, Carnivo Papidevorus, Ancolia Veneinosa Pop. Each one of the 17 pieces describes the world in its own fashion, recounts a story, which secretly imbibes itself with that of the person wearing it.

In this collection, the imagination of Victoire de Castellane, freed from the shackles of convention, unleashes itself and proves its audacity. The first part of the book, designed to represent the extravagant nature of this collection as accurately as possible, is generously illustrated by Guido Mocafico’s photographs. The second part also shows the various phases involved in unveiling this collection, starting from the building of a lotus-like structure in the virtual sphere on Second Life, until the actual presentation in the hall Nymphéas de Monet at the musée de l’Orangerie.

Christian Dior’s successors – Yves Saint Laurent, Marc Bohan, Gianfranco Ferré and John Galliano – have remained faithful to Dior's vision while at the same time reinterpreting it in their own new and distinctive ways.

This massive, luxurious book traces the history of the House of Dior through the constantly changing contours of its haute couture. It is also a history of fashion since 1947, of its dreams and realities, its big events and main protagonists, its stars and clients, its models and journalists, its indispensable seamstresses and all who work their magic behind the scenes.

A feast of contemporary photographs by the most outstanding fashion photographers of their time, including Richard Avedon, Henry Clarke, Nick Knight, Willy Maywald, Irving Penn and many others, is complemented by Laziz Hamani’s studio portraits of 150 exceptional designs selected from the 120 shows presented by Dior over its sixty-year history.

On the occasion of its sixtieth anniversary, the House of Dior presents a monumental recounting of its history, imparted through its exceptional legacy: one hundred and fifty of its most beautiful dresses. This magnificent, four-hundred-page book, unveils its most beautiful Haute Couture dresses captured with original photography and unique, insightful texts which annotating Christian Dior and its couturiers from Yves Saint Laurent, Marc Bohan, and Gianfranco Ferre to John Galliano. press reviews, photographs of celebrity models from Suzy Parker to Kate Moss, each immortalized in Dior by the fashion photographers of the time, from Irving Penn to Nick Knight.

This definitive anthology of one of the world s foremost couture houses captures the feel of each era, the grand ambience, creativity and an assortment of presentations, fashion shows, ateliers and clients from every period: it's all here. An added bonus: a list of the house s one hundred and twenty Haute Couture collections, including their launch dates, themes, and designers which are listed in the appendix.

Review
With 400 pages and 300 illustrations, it's just the thing for a best-dressed bedside table. -- Capital File

Christian Dior pulled off a coup that would revolutionise the international fashion scene when he showed his first collection on 12 February 1947. Thus was the ‘New Look’ born, which made his Paris fashion house world-famous overnight. Today Dior’s early collections symbolise the rebirth of Paris haute couture after 1945. Within only a few years Christian Dior rose to rule over a flourishing luxury empire and was celebrated throughout the world as the monarch of fashion until his sudden death in October 1957. His twenty-two haute couture collections – including the celebrated A and H, as well as Tulip lines – comprising some three thousand models, represent a design legacy that more than any other wrote 20th-century fashion history.

The present publication marks two anniversaries: it is published sixty years after the first Christian Dior collection was launched and fifty years after his untimely death. For the first time, the links between Christian Dior and Germany in the founder years of Maison Dior (1947–1957) are focused on. Twenty original, for the most part, unpublished Dior models from German museums are shown, including the fabulous Marlene Dietrich Collection in Berlin. The twenty-four Dior fashion jewellery sets made in Pforzheim presented here are astonishingly fine and richly diverse. This sumptuously illustrated publication contains an extensive annotated catalogue as well as essays by five distinguished specialists in fashion and jewellery on the fashion jewellery made under a licensing agreement in Germany for Dior, the early Dior fashion shows in Germany, Christian Dior’s sole postwar visit to Germany as well as the reception of Dior fashions as echoed in German-language journals and magazines of that time.