Christian Dior: LIFE Covers the Birth of the 'New Look,' 1948

18.05.12

“Like most dramas involving an entire social upheaval,” Perkins wrote, “the New Look revolution has had many villains (or heroes, depending on one’s point of view). But the main one is … named Christian Dior, who would be instantly picked by anyone familiar with whodunits as the character least likely to be suspected. M Dior, who looks extraordinarily like a Kewpie doll, is short, round, bald; wears dark dowdy, unpressed suits, office-worker ties and shirts and pointed shoes. One of New York’s fashion sophisticates, after first meeting M. Dior in America a few months ago, remarked, ‘I’d been waiting for this chic, dashing character, and what do I find? A French undertaker.’

“The first results of the Dior insurrection,” LIFE went on, “had, in fact, frankly appalled M. Dior himself. At his Paris opening last year, besieged by a shrieking throng of reporters, editors and buyers, he had been heard to murmur, ‘My God, what have I done?’ Dior had, in fact, begun the third fashion revolution of the 20 Century. Paul Poiret had revolutionized women’s clothes in 1910, Gabrielle Chanel had staged the next uprising after World War I. In February 1947 Christian Dior ushered in the New Look.”

Source: TIME