Christian Dior’s Most Famous Silhouettes in Vogue Inline
Photographed by Serge Balkin, Vogue, April 19471/22Spring 1947: The New Look
“If there could be a composite, mythical woman dressed by a mythical, composite couturier,” wrote Vogue in the April 1, 1947, issue, “she would probably wear her skirt about 14 inches from the floor; it might have, for its working model a flower: petals of padding and stiffening seen beneath the cup of the skirt.” In other words, she’d be wearing the New Look silhouette introduced by Dior in his debut collectsion, the most iconic example of which is the Bar suit.
Illustrated by Eric, Vogue, October 19472/22Fall 1947
“Take last season’s round hipline, small shoulder, pulled-in waist, longer skirt, and emphasize each; stress the bosom, the derrière; add a side-moving hat . . .”
Illustrated by Moles, Vogue, March 19483/22Spring 1948
“The new ‘zigzag’ cut of Dior; a glove-close top, a skirt manipulated entirely at the back.”
Photographed by Clifford Coffin, Vogue, September 1948 (left); October 1948 (right)4/22Fall 1948
Left: “The wide flaring silhouette: The cloche. Gentle natural shoulders; lamp-shade draping; the cummerbund waistline. . . .”
Right: Photographed in the gardens of the Grand Trianon, “Dior’s big satin dress, pearl-grey, stately, the extraordinary décolletage drapery slanted high above one shoulder, and balanced by a bow at the side-back; the skirt a sweeping fullness of doubly inverted pleats.”
Photographed by Nepo, Vogue, March 19495/22Spring 1949
(Kangaroo) pockets and panels.
Illustrated by René Bouché, Vogue, September 19496/22Fall 1949
“An ample line, belted in, with soft bulk somewhere, either above or below the waist.”
Illustrated by Eric, Vogue, March 19507/22Spring 1950
“Vertical is the new word.” Narrow works, too.
Photographed by Irving Penn, Vogue, September 19508/22Fall 1950: The Oblique Line
“Wrapped, jutted, buttoned, slanting lines.”
Photographed by John Rawlings, Vogue, March 19519/22Spring 1951
“Dior’s collectsion was his best since his first sensation. Dior, who gave the padded, pleated New Look its name, turned his back on all padding and stiffening, and only used pleats when they were clinging like fluted columns. He made carved oval dresses. . . .”
Photographed by Henry Clarke, Vogue, September 195110/22Fall 1951
“Dior’s new long line.”
Photographed by Horst P. Horst, Vogue, March 195211/22Spring 1952
“The waist is what catches the eye right away.”
Photographed by Frances McLaughlin-Gill, Vogue, September 195212/22Fall 1952
“Dior’s ‘Queen of Hearts’ profile follows the molded body line to the waist, with a stiff, standout skirt-yoke holding out the skirt. The shaped profile swells out from the molded waist to a lightly rounded back or side. . . . Perfection of construction and execution make Dior’s collectsion a strong fashion force.”
Photographed by Henry Clarke, Vogue, March 195313/22Spring 1953: Tulip Line
“It’s definite, now: Dior believes that a woman’s waist should be molded, her body silhouetted. His figurine figure of last season has crystallized this way—into a line that’s a slender, curving stalk for three-fourths of the way, and after that, at the top, a flowering of fullness. The comparison seems inevitable: it’s a tulip—and the exact reverse of Dior’s former tulip-line where the flare was at the hem.”
Illustrated by René Bouché, Vogue, September 195314/22Fall 1953
“. . . the hemlines that made the news was Dior’s—so short in some cases that it made its point dramatically but it was downright unwearable; just short enough in others (left and right) so that any woman with good legs and a strong appetite for fashion news will be tempted to try it.”
Photographed by Henry Clarke, Vogue, March 195415/22Spring 1954
“What do they do for relaxation, Dior’s new clothes? They just take everything a lot easier now. Jackets are shorter, more lenient; many are bloused. Skirts, even the straight ones, are far more livable. This is something of a millennium, this much ease from Dior. But one thing’s sure: It’s easier said than done.”
Photographed by Clifford Coffin, Vogue, September 195416/22Fall 1954: The H Line
“Even at Dior . . . the news is as much in the look as in the line. His sheathed bosom is actually an accessory to a new kind of femininity: subtler, not at all insistent, full of a charming reserve.”
Photographed by Karen Radkai, Vogue, March 195517/22Spring 1955: The A Line
“An ‘A’ set in the most beautiful fashion type—slender shoulders for the apex; sides slanting gently to the base, the hem.”
Photographed by Henry Clarke, Vogue, September 195518/22Fall 1955: The Y Line
“Bulk above slimness.”
Photographed by Henry Clarke, Vogue, March 195619/22Spring 1956
“A waistline that dawned (it’s very subtle) as almost the newsiest Spring line in Paris—the work of the jacket that Dior calls the ‘caraco.’”
Photographed by Frances McLaughlin-Gill, Vogue, September 195620/22Fall 1956
“It came in, quiet as a mouse, at the Dior opening; left the room (and the world of fashion) buzzing. . . . Yes, the elegance is unquestioned. No, they’re not a fluke; the noticeably longer skirt is prophetic, perhaps for next spring, almost certainly for next autumn. Now? Experiment—inch by inch.”
Photographed by Henry Clarke, Vogue, March 195721/22Spring 1957: The 7/8ths length
“The continuous, flowing, soft line, shoes to hat.”
Photographed by William Klein, Vogue, September 195722/22Fall 1957
The unfitted dress . . . “masks the contours of the body with an ease as plotted as a compass reading.”
