Miss Dior

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His mother, Madeleine, had dressed in the romantic, sweeping gowns of the period, and it was these that inspired Dior’s creation of swishing full skirts and a rounded hourglass silhouette, achieved with a corseted waist and padded bust. She had been a loyal and loving sister throughout her brother’s life, and continued to be so after his death, honouring his legacy in many ways, including her consistent support for the Christian Dior museum that was eventually established in Granville. Born in 1917, Catherine was the youngest of the five Dior siblings and despite a 12-year age gap shared a close bond with Christian. THE TIMES TOP 10 BESTSELLERAN IRISH INDEPENDENT BOOK OF THE YEAR'A gripping story in which Justine Picardie brilliantly contrasts the cruel Old World of wartime France with the hopeful New World epitomised by Christian Dior's New Look.

However, having said that, this book does delve into the history of the French and women's involvement in WWII and female POW's. Upon her repatriation to France, she lived a quiet life but did testify at one of the many war crimes tribunals held in France. Catherine's story shines - the quiet Dior who preferred flowers to fashion, the unsung heroine who survived the abuse of the Third Reich to help liberate France.The passionate art of his couture therefore resists being fully dismantled, and examined as a logical, rational craft. Instead, like his sister Catherine, he preferred to stay at home and help their mother in the garden, away from the malodorous Dior factories. Less than two years after the Second World War ended, the French designer Christian Dior set the fashion world alight with a style coined the “New Look” by Harper’s Bazaar editor-in-chief Carmel Snow. Her name is Catherine Dior, and she arrived as I wandered through the garden of La Colle Noire, her brother Christian’s graceful château in the hills of rural Provence; a place she often visited, and a house where she lived for a while, after his sudden death of a heart attack at the age of fifty-two, in 1957.

This is the story of a ghost who walked into my life on a sunlit morning and would not let go of me.The many pho­tos of dress­es designed dur­ing the peri­od and the celebri­ties who wore them bring some need­ed charm and col­or to the story. But like the alchemist’s treasured doll in Hoffmann’s eerie tale of The Sandman, she is unable to take on a life of her own. Now, having said that, the reader will find the book an exceptional piece of work in bringing the early to late 20th century to life through vivid and clear descriptions. The book is full of things like this: unlikely, even bizarre, shafts of light that have you blinking, given the darkness all around.