On Arte, Christian Dior’s fashion designs come back to life

ARTE – FRIDAY, JUNE 18 AT 10:25 p.m. – DOCUMENTARY

Fashion design has emerged as one of the backbones of Loïc Prigent’s remarkable documentary work for Arte. After filming, in 2012, Karl Lagerfeld recounting his life in drawings, then recalling, in 2015, the models that had revolutionized the design and manufacture of the fur for Fendi, the fashion journalist had paid tribute, in 2017, to the unpublished archives of Yves Saint Laurent.

The following year, he had to follow this principle again by going to draw, from the archives of the house founded by Christian Dior (1905-1957), not only the designs of each of the two fashion collections delivered each season by the couturier, from 1947 to his death, but also sketches and projects that he sketched with a sure and inspired stroke on the support that fell to his hand.

Stored in a bunker at the secret address, these documents are shown to fashion historians and journalists, to one of the couturier’s biographers and to the house’s collaborators and archivists. They discover them with admiring amazement in front of Loïc Prigent’s camera.

Florence Chehet, current first of a blurry workshop (evening dresses, etc.) at Dior, explains that what appears to be a few simple lines thrown on the paper is in fact a drawing whose technical precision would allow the garment to be made identically. Certain historical models continue to be ordered, such as the famous dress “Juno” (fall-winter 1949), and constitute “The coal that still fuels the enormous Dior fashion machine”.

Unpublished boxes

In some cases, such as that of the “Bar” suit (spring-summer 1947), another emblematic Dior model, the original design is missing. “Do you want me to do this to you?” Here it is ! “, launches Yorn Michaelsen, who collaborated with the fashion designer when he was only 18 years old and one of the tasks of which was to rectify certain sketches of the master and to discard unfinished versions.

Because, in addition to the incredible documentary contribution provided by this film with the alert finesse and the subtle sound illustrations, we made the happy acquaintance of some of the Christian Dior employees who are still alive ( and in excellent shape), including Odile Kern, her favorite model, and the petulant Anne-Marie Gossot, 93, which was her first studio blur.

The latter remembers perfectly what wealthy clients wanted and rediscovers, as if it were yesterday, the designs on which she had worked some sixty years earlier … Anne-Marie Gossot had drawn what the fashion of 1946 looked like. and copied a model from the first collection of 1947, called “in 8” and renamed “New Look” by the American fashion journalist Carmel Snow: between these two moments fixed by the pencil, fashion experienced a revolution.

The unpublished boxes also contain models designed by Dior before the war, notebooks, diaries, the guestbook of his house in the south of France and a myriad of business cards left by the top of fashion and of the press during the funeral of the one who was, according to Loïc Prigent, the brilliant “Skirt length dictator” during ten years of grueling work that would end him with a heart attack.