Abstract
This paper reviews the biography of Christian Dior. The paper covers his childhood, what influenced his career in the fashion industry, his early fashion design activities, his success in the fashion industry, and finally, his influence on the fashion industry.

Thesis Statement: The changing fortunes of fashion design through the life of Christian Dior

Introduction
The Great Depression that started in 1929 and lasted in the early 1940’s transcended geographical borders and social status adversely affecting, among others, personal income and global trade. Among those affected was the family of Christian Dior, yet, the Great Depression was a defining moment on his career on the fashion industry that spanned for a decade. During and shortly after the end of the Second World War, for most people, dressing elegantly had little meaning. While men were busy fighting, women used to work on farms and factories; thus, a fashion trend did not exist. Also, Paris was a fading haven of fashion. However, all this changed when a legendary fashion designer burst into the scene, Christian Dior. With a couture line under his belt and having founded the Dior Empire, Christian Dior was an influential figure in the fashion design industry.

Early Life
The second born in a family of five siblings, he was born in January 21, 1905 in Normandy, France. His parents were Madeline and Maurice Dior, the latter a manufacturer of chemicals and fertilizer . His parents wanted him to become a diplomat and insisted that he study political science at the Faculty of Political at Ecole des Sciences Politiques, which contrasted with his interest in art and desire to study it at the Academy of Fine Arts.

Early Fashion Designing
After his family relocated from Normandy to Paris, Dior, a reserved and shy boy, used to assist his mother in designing the new surroundings in readiness for hosting friends. Unlike his other siblings, Dior helped his mother in designing the garden and the house. He used to supplement his income by making fashion sketches of hats and dresses which he used to sell for 10 cents each. After school, his father gave him capital in 1928 and, together with a friend, opened an art gallery. However, due to the economic recession due to the Great Depression, the gallery was closed down in 1934. He teamed up with Robert Piguet, a fashion designer, and worked with him until 1940s. Later, he was drafted into the military and for a short service served as a sapper in the Fifth Engineers Corps where his role involved the transportation of railway tracks.
Even though the family lived in Paris, France, the Dior family had a summer house in the Normandy coast where they spent their summer vacations. Whenever they were in their summer house, the children could prepare themselves for the annual carnivals held there. Soon, Dior made himself a name for his creativity in designing his siblings’ outfits. When the war broke out in 1914, the family spent four consecutive years there before going back to Paris, giving Dior ample time to hone his outfit designing skills.
The moments that followed the Great Depression were trying ones. Bernard, Dior’s youngest sibling, had had a mental problem for a long time. Too severe was his condition that he had to be admitted to a psychiatric center and it had a heavy mental toll on his mother. Dior’s mother died of septicemia in 1931. The Great Depression was a mighty blow to Dior’s father too who traded in stocks and shares, losing all his money after the stock market crashed. The declaration of bankruptcy to his father and the subsequent losing all his possessions, and the death of his mother was too much for Dior to take. To soothe his mind from all those negative life experiences, Dior and a group of architects toured Russia. Upon returning from Russia, he met his partner, Jacques Bonjean, had closed down the gallery (Pochna 1996). Dior then had to depend on his friends for the basic necessities. Later, he found a space in an attic, in a friend’s gallery, where he sold paintings .
Three years later, the gallery was too closed down and, too much to bear it, he became sick with TB. Friends settled his hospital bill in Pyrenees and in Ibiza Island where he finished his treatment, he found an interest in tapestry weaving and designing. Getting cured a year later, he went back to Paris and, finding no job, lived on his friends’ kindness. It was there that he made a final decision of becoming a couturier and got a room and assistance from an illustrator, Jacques Ozenne. Ozenne taught him how he could excel in drawings . By selling those sketches for him, Ozenne helped him to start earning some income but his boost came when the country’s top couturiers went for his designs, more so, hat designs that made him hog the limelight.
After the Second World War, which saw him serve in Southern France, he went back to Paris and joined a bigger fashion design house, Lucien Lelong. There, the main designers were Pierre Balmon and him. During the Second World War, Dior strove hard to preserve the French fashion industry. In the said war, women clothes were not fashionable as the women had to work in farms and industries whereby clothes such as jeans were the norm. During that duration of the war, the clients that he served included the wives of French collaborators and those of the Nazi. With the help of Marcel Boussac, a textile manufacturer, he opened his own fashion design house on Avenue Montaigne, Paris, in 1946, naming his first collection “Corolle.” The collection came to be known as the “New Look”. The term was coined by Carmel Show, the editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar, a popular fashion magazine. He said that, “It’s quite a revelation, dear Christian. Your dresses have such a new look.” The clothes he designed had a rounded shoulder, natural waistline, and full skirts. He termed the clients whom he dressed the clothes as “flower women.” He allegedly said that he “designed flower women.” However, his new fashion designs were met with criticisms from conservative people. Women criticized his clothes, saying that the designs that he had come up with covered their legs, a trend that they have not been accustomed when there was a limited supply of the fabric due to rationing.

Success in Fashion Design
Paris, a dying fashion design haven, was re-established by Dior as a fashion design hub through the introduction of the “New Look”. For his great efforts, the French government gave him the Legion of Honor (the Remise de la legion d’honneur a Christian Dior), an honor that was awarded to him in 1950. Other awards that were awarded to him included the Neiman Marcus award, awarded in Dallas in 1947; he was awarded the Parsons School of Design Distinguished Achievement in New York in 1956 . The first ever couture show by Dior was held on February 12, 1947, in which the “New Look” premiered. The couture show, as Colin McDowell, a fashion history historian observed in his Fashion Today book, ushered in the modern fashion. The show caught the eye of movie stars and it prompted them to start shopping his designs. Then, due to the popularity that Dior fashion designs had garnered in America, there followed a great demand, a reason which made him open a main fashion design house in Fifth Avenue, New York, naming it Christian Dior New York, Inc. A Dior perfume, Miss Dior, later followed.
In the many balls that were held in the 1950s, he always dressed up to attend them. His outfit designs attracted the attention of a number of people and he dressed many film stars, notably Marlene Dietrich and Ava Gardner. Also he provided props to the film stars. During Princess Margret’s 21st birthday in 1951, Dior dressed the royalty which by then was a great feat. He dressed the princess in a silk organza, mother of pearl, and gold star embroidery over a one-shoulder gown.
Dior was regarded as a dictator of European style in the 1950s as each and every piece from his collections had a theme: the classic suits, ballerina skirt, Zigzag, Vertical, Oval, the 1953 Tulip line, the 1954 sack or H-line, as well as the 1955 A-line and Y-line (AVRO 2005). Dior enjoyed going to the country after each collection and, at Milly-la-Foret, he’d purchased an old mill that had several cottages . It was here that, even though he never cut his connections with Paris, he could sometimes design new collections.
Christian Balenciaga, a prowess in fabric shaping, was a great Dior’s competitor. Customers who were once loyal to Balenciaga shifted to become Dior’s clients. The competition was so much that Balenciaga contemplated retiring, much to the chagrin of Dior who tried persuading him not to retire. Dior started to license his designs. Two yearly collections were held in the London-based Dior Salon starting in 1952. Cheap imitations of his designer outfits flooded the market and it prompted Dior to copyright his designs, though copyrighting did not prevent further imitations of his designs.

Dior’s Influence on the Fashion Industry
The Dior Empire grew to involve furs, accessories, perfumes, hosiery, and perfumes through worldwide licensing. The assorted Dior products inspired individual designers and Dior gave the upcoming designers a platform where they could show their talents. Dior also introduced the royalty form of payment in the fashion industry. This came when Rouet was offered the rights to produce Dior stockings in a deal worth $10, 000, which by then, was an enormous amount of money. Trust Dior to accept the deal immediately. He tailored the fee so that he could get a percentage (royalty) from the sales of the stockings. During the war in France, Dior toiled hard to preserve the artistic fashion industry in France and he was on the frontline as a fashion leader in the 1940s and 1950s.The 1940s waistline that is featured in every season, long after Dior died, shows Dior’s taste of fashion and style that charted a new course for the fashion industry.
The “American producers who made Christian Dior products acknowledged that his presence had an equally influence on fashion, and recognized that his presence had an equally enormous influence on sales” ( Blaszczyk 2009 p. 93). He encouraged new talent such as when he featured forty designs of Yves Saint Laurent, then a 21-year-old, who had taken two years on his designs, in his collections.
He inspired many people. Christian Lacroix, a fashion designer, recalled,
“My mother says that when I was little, my grandfather used to take me and my cousins on one side after dinner and ask us what we wanted to be when we grew up, and I’d say ‘Christian Dior’. He was so famous in France at the time. It seems as if he wasn’t a man, but an institution.”

When he died on October 23, 1957, Dior left Yves Saint Laurent, then a 21-year old and an his assistant of four years, as the head designer. However, through the success of Christian Dior’s fashion house, which has gone on to open many outlets around the world and winning subsequent awards, the legacy of Dior lives on.
Conclusion
With his innovative mind, Christian Dior took the fashion industry to new heights. However, most notable is that he designed under his name for only ten years before he died; yet, he left an indelible mark on the fashion industry. He inspired the talent and set the trend of today’s fashion designers and the fashion industry in general. Death robbed the fashion industry an influential figure, yet despite that, the designs that he inspired and the remarkable success of his brand Christian Dior is a proof that his legacy lives on.
References
Blaszczyk, Regina Lee. Producing Fashion: Commerce, Culture, and Consumers. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009.

Christian Dior: The Man behind the Myth. Directed by Philippe Lanfranchi. Documentary shown on MTV. Produced by the AVRO, 2005.

Pochna, Marie France. Christian Dior: The man who made the world look new. New York: Arcade Publishing, 1996.