The New Look

French Fashion & Haute Couture

Course 1 · Chapter 5 · The New Look and Postwar Couture

In February 1947, in a country still short of food, coal and cloth, a new Paris house showed a collection that gave the next ten years their silhouette. Christian Dior's "New Look" was admired, attacked and copied, and it helped to restore Paris as the capital of fashion. This chapter covers the collection and the argument about it, the other great postwar designers, Cristóbal Balenciaga and Hubert de Givenchy, the system that supported couture, and the business of licensing that kept it alive. Names, dates and figures are from general knowledge and flagged "check".

Dior, February 1947

The man

Christian Dior (1905 to 1957) was born in Granville, in Normandy, and began as an art-gallery owner before he worked as a designer for Robert Piguet and Lucien Lelong (check). With the financial backing of the textile manufacturer Marcel Boussac he opened his own house at 30 avenue Montaigne in Paris in December 1946 (check).

The collection

His first show, on 12 February 1947, presented two lines, Corolle and En 8, with rounded shoulders, a tightly cinched waist, padded hips and a very full skirt reaching the calf. It used many metres of fabric per dress (check). The effect was of a flower, hence the name Corolle (the petals of a flower).

The name

The editor of the American magazine Harper's Bazaar, Carmel Snow, is said to have exclaimed that it was a "new look", and the phrase stuck (check). In France the line was called the Corolle line, and "New Look" was an English-language label that spread back to Paris.

A success in the right year The timing helped. Paris had been cut off from the world during the Occupation, and the houses wanted to show that French luxury was back. Dior's backer Boussac sold cloth, and a style that needed many metres suited him. Within a few years, Dior was one of the largest earners of export income among French fashion firms (check). Some historians stress that Dior did not invent the style from nothing: nipped waists and full skirts had been shown in the late 1930s, and his achievement was to present it as a whole and at the right moment (Exercise 1).

The Argument

  • For. Many welcomed the collection as a sign of recovery, glamour and femininity after the plain dress of the war years. The press, and especially the American press, celebrated it.
  • Against. Critics said it was wasteful in a time of shortage. In Britain, where clothes rationing lasted until 1949, politicians and the press criticised the use of so much cloth (check). In Paris, an incident in which women were reported to have attacked a model who wore the New Look is often told, though its details are uncertain (check).
  • The question of women. Some writers said that the New Look returned women to a restricted and decorative role after they had worked and taken on responsibility during the war. Others said that women chose it freely and enjoyed the change. Women in France had gained the vote only in 1944, and the argument cannot be settled by one answer (check).
  • The legacy. The silhouette dominated the 1950s. It also made "the line" of each season into a news story, which journalists have followed since.

Other Postwar Names

Designer (check each)Note
Cristóbal BalenciagaA Spanish Basque who opened his Paris house in 1937. He was admired by other designers for his sculptural cuts and skill, and avoided publicity. He closed the house in 1968, saying that the standards of couture could no longer be kept (check). Dior is reported to have called him "the master of us all".
Hubert de GivenchyOpened his house in 1952 at the age of 25. He is best known for his friendship with the actress Audrey Hepburn, whom he dressed in films including Sabrina (1954) and Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) (check).
Pierre BalmainFounded his house in 1945 and dressed royalty and film stars. A classic designer of the elegant daytime and evening dress of the period (check).
Jacques FathA younger designer, known for his glamour and his relations with the press and with the United States, who died young in 1954 (check).
Madame GrèsKnown for draped dresses in the Greek style, a link back to Vionnet (Chapter 4).
Coco ChanelReturned in 1954 at the age of 70. The French press was cool, but American buyers liked the suit (check).

How the System Worked

  • The label. The use of the term "haute couture" was fixed in law in the 1940s, with rules set by the ministry of industry and the trade body (check). A house had to be a member to be called a couture house and to take part in the Paris shows.
  • The houses. There were over a hundred couture houses in the immediate postwar years, fewer than twenty by the 1970s (check). The change shows the shift to ready-to-wear (Chapter 6).
  • The clients. Aristocrats, film stars, rich Americans and, increasingly, the buyers for department stores and manufacturers, who paid to copy models. The price of a couture dress was well above the cost of the cloth and labour.
  • The money. The real profit came less from the dresses than from licensing the name: perfumes, stockings, gloves, scarves and later ready-to-wear. Dior's perfume Miss Dior (1947) and the licensing deals of 1948 and 1949 for the United States were early and influential examples (check).
  • The workers. The ateliers employed hundreds of seamstresses, often women from the provinces or abroad, working long hours, and their conditions are covered in Chapter 9.
A British comparison The British reaction to the New Look was mixed. The Board of Trade, which ran rationing, was openly opposed, and the press argued over whether women should accept it. Even so, the British royal family and its designers joined the Paris cycle: Dior showed in London in 1950 and designed Princess Margaret's dress for her 21st birthday in 1951 (check). British couturiers such as Norman Hartnell, who made the wedding dress of Princess Elizabeth in 1947 and her coronation gown in 1953, and Hardy Amies, worked on the same models of elegance but with a different clientele (check). Audrey Hepburn, Givenchy's muse, was born in Brussels to an English father (check).
Check the details The story of the New Look has been told so often that a polished version has replaced the record. Check the date and size of the collection, the quote attributed to Carmel Snow, the reports of attacks on models and the figures for exports against contemporary reports and a scholarly history. Claims about what the collection meant for women are interpretation, not fact.

Exercises

Exercise 1

Test the claim "The New Look liberated women from wartime austerity" with the six questions, and give a more careful sentence.

→ Solution
Exercise 2

Compare Dior and Balenciaga as businessmen and as designers: how did each deal with publicity, copying and licensing?

→ Solution
Exercise 3

Explain why the number of couture houses fell from over a hundred to fewer than twenty, and say what evidence would test each explanation.

→ Solution

Quick Reference

  • 1947: Dior's first collection, the New Look (Corolle and En 8) (check)
  • People: Christian Dior, Marcel Boussac, Balenciaga, Givenchy, Balmain, Fath, Madame Grès
  • System: a protected label, a trade body, copying rights and licensing
  • Argument: waste in a time of shortage, and what the style meant for women