MISS DIOR

A fashion historian searches for an elusive woman.

Renowned couturier Christian Dior named his signature perfume Miss Dior, honoring his sister Catherine (1917-2008). Although British novelist, fashion historian, and memoirist Picardie, author of a well-received biography of Coco Chanel, tries to maintain the focus on Catherine, her life becomes subsumed within a sweeping history of war, French politics, and fashion. Surely, Catherine experienced a tumultuous few years. Alongside her married lover, she joined the French Resistance, tasked with gathering information on the movements of German troops and warships. She was arrested, tortured, and imprisoned but never revealed the identities of other Resistance members. In August 1944, she was sent to a German concentration camp for women and, a month later, was transported to a labor camp, then another, to work in munitions factories. In April 1945, she escaped from a death march and made her way back to Paris. Despite the privations of war, Paris couture was thriving, with Dior a rising star. The revenue of couture houses rose from 67 million francs in 1941 to more than 463 million in 1943. Malnourished and weak, Catherine was beset by psychological symptoms: “insomnia, nightmares, memory loss, anxiety and depression,” and a need for isolation. For a while, she shared her brother’s luxurious Paris apartment, then moved with her lover to their own home near the flower shop they ran. They spent summers in Provence in a house Catherine had inherited from her family. She did not adopt the extravagant, romantic New Look for which her brother became famous. Described as stoic, quiet, and unemotional by her godson, whom Picardie talked with, Catherine was “invisible to Christian’s acolytes.” The book is generously illustrated with family and historical photographs, Dior’s drawings, and fashion images, and Picardie interweaves a sensitive narrative of her search for Catherine as she follows the “echoing footfall of a disappearing girl.”

A well-informed rendering of dramatic times.