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image courtesy of google images
1910: The family move to Paris and Dior enrols at the Lycée Gerson
1923: To please his father, Dior studies at the Ecole des Sciences Politiques (Sciences Po’) to prepare to join the diplomatic corps.
1928: Opens a modern art gallery, Galerie Jacques Bonjean, with a friend and financial backing from his father.
1931: The Dior family business folds in the depression. Forced to close the gallery, Dior scrapes a living by selling his art collection and fashion sketches to couturiers.
1938: The couturier Robert Piguet employs Dior as a design assistant at his new couture house.
1939: When World War II begins, Dior is called up into the French Army, but is demobilised after a year when France surrenders and joins his family on a farm in Provence.
1941 Returns to Paris to work as a design assistant to Lucien Lelong.
1946: After World War II ends, Dior persuades the industrialist Marcel Boussac to back him in the opening of his own couture house to be managed by the civil servant Jacques Rouët.
1947: On 12 February Dior presents his debut couture collection, which is an instant success dubbed the ‘New Look’ for its voluptuous silhouette and luxurious fabrics. Launch of the first Dior perfume, Miss Dior.
1948: Dior and Rouët open a ready-to-wear boutique in New York and, over the next few years, launch new perfumes and negotiate the licensing rights for Christian Dior hosiery, ties and other products.
1950: Designs a dress for Marlene Dietrich in Alfred Hitchcock’s Stage Fright and, the following year, a suit for Dietrich in No Highway in the Sky.
1954: After years of variations on the New Look, Dior unveils his new direction, the French Bean Line or Flat Look.
1955: Yves Mathieu-Saint-Laurent joins Dior as a design assistant. The Grande Boutique opens on Avenue Montaigne and Dior launches a cosmetics range.
1956: Designs over a dozen dresses for Ava Gardner in The Little Hut.
1957: Christian Dior dies of a heart attack after choking on a fishbone while on a rest cure at a spa in Montecatini, Italy. Dior’s funeral in Paris is attended by more than 2,500 people. Yves Saint Laurent is named as Dior’s successor and unveils his first collection in January 1958.
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