Coco Chanel_ An Intimate Life - Lisa Chaney [194]
After years of austerity, with strictly regulated yardage for clothes, Dior’s New Look (actually titled “Coralle,” after the petals of a flower) did away with the hard, squared-off padded shoulders and short lengths of the ubiquitous military influence almost overnight. He presented instead softer, feminine, waisted jackets, and dresses and skirts using yards and yards of fabric. Molded shoulders, flattering flared skirts, tightly corseted bodices and provocatively defined breasts helped signal the impression of bodies that were archetypes of the female form.
Describing his couture as “ephemeral architecture, dedicated to the beauty of the female body” for his first collection, Dior was violently criticized by the establishment for not working in the spirit of austerity. Britain’s president of the Board of Trade objected; there were accusations of decadence and “lowering the standards of public morality.” Some women complained about covering up their legs, and during a photo shoot in a Paris market, the models were attacked by women stall holders over the profligacy of their dresses. But all that really mattered was that both women and men fell in love with Dior’s glorification of all that was delicate and feminine.
With great speed, the New Look reestablished Paris as the epicenter of the world’s fashion. Recalling the response to these luxurious and exaggeratedly feminine clothes, one socialite said, “Women had been deprived of everything for years and they threw themselves on fashion like hungry wolves.” Indeed, the New Look was so successful that by the beginning of 1950, approximately 75 percent of French couture exports came from the House of Dior. Within a year, he had become the most famous designer in the world.
Gabrielle was curious. Angry at what she saw as unwarranted attention, she came back to France to see this New Look for herself. Meeting her friend Christian Bérard, who had illustrated Dior’s collection, she berated him for working for someone participating in “the ruin of French couture.” Now hopelessly addicted to his opium, Bérard was also a classic Parisian celebrity, noted for his theatrical decors, his fashion sketches, his gossip and his wit. Annoyed by Gabrielle’s arrogance, he retorted, “Oh stop taking yourself for France and crowing ‘cock a doodle doo!’”
Much more, however, than Gabrielle’s pique at the brilliance of Dior’s success, she was appalled at the reintroduction of so many aspects of women’s dress from which she had worked so hard to free them. It was ironic that Dior, a gifted, gentle and retiring homosexual, had returned women to an updated version of the Belle Epoque. Woman was once again to be worshipped as an image. She was an immensely elegant, padded, corseted and constrained symbol. With her tiny waist, voluptuous breasts and elegantly female hips, she was costumed as a beautiful ideal. For all its undoubted beauty, this image presented woman as an adored object who moved with less freedom than she had done for many years. Some of these lovely and graceful costumes were so structured that they could almost stand up on their own. Whatever else it did, Dior’s couture symbolized the more reticent role women were expected to revert to in the years following the war.
When Gabrielle was met by reporters on her 1953 visit to the States and asked what she thought of the New Look, wearing one of her own suits from a prewar collection, she answered, “Just take a look at me.” The exquisite couture Dior and his fellow designers created throughout the late forties was the antithesis of everything in Gabrielle’s sartorial philosophy.
For many years, the upper floors of Gabrielle