Christian Dior
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Who says recessions can't have a silver lining? When the 1929 stock market crash ran Christian Dior's art gallery out of business, the onetime political science student found a new way to earn his bread: selling sketches to Parisian couture houses and doing illustrations for the fashion pages of Le Figaro. Eventually, his talent was recognized by Marcel Boussac, a textile magnate, who financed Dior's own couture house, buying a mansion on the Avenue Montaigne and helping his protégé set up shop in 1946.
Dior's first collection, in 1947, was a shot heard round the world—without exaggeration probably the most famous single season in style history. The New Look—which harked back to the excesses of the Belle Époque and brushed away bad memories of wartime fabric rationing with a sweep of crinolines—featured wasp-waisted, full-skirted silhouettes nipped in by boned corsets and fleshed out with hip padding. While a few protesters took offense at Dior's decadent swaths upon swaths of material, it was an international sensation.
Over the next decade, Dior remained an oracle on the Right Bank, dictating nouvelle directions that trickled down to the masses, inking forward-thinking licensing deals, and appearing on the cover of Time magazine. In 1957, however, the world was shocked when he suddenly died. Proving to be as headline-making in death as in life, he had suffered a heart attack at an Italian spa at the age of 52.
Dior's 21-year-old assistant was left to "save fashion," as the newspapers shrieked. The understudy's name? Yves Saint Laurent, perhaps the only man of his day brilliant enough to fill such impressive chaussures. Saint Laurent's own first collection, the controversial Trapeze show, made waves almost as stormy as those of the New Look, but he pushed the envelope a little too far with his Beatnik collection a few years later, after which Saint Laurent left the house amid another firestorm of controversy.
Since then, a parade of boldfaced names (Marc Bohan, Gianfranco Ferré, and, most memorably, John Galliano, the house's current designer) has kept the flame burning—and the registers ringing with sales of It accessories. Bernard Arnault, who acquired Dior in 1985, brought the fabled house under the sheltering wing of LVMH, ensuring the lights will continue to burn brightly at 30 Avenue Montaigne.
John Galliano
With his muscle-bound physique and runway swagger (no reticent post-show wave from backstage for this designer), John Galliano almost upstages the sensational creations he dreams up for the House of Dior and his own line. Almost. A provocateur since his French Revolution-themed graduation collection at Central Saint Martins, Galliano excels at excess. Opera divas, Masai tribesmen, medieval warrior women, Austro-Hungarian royalty, and even the homeless have stomped down the catwalk at his theatrically themed shows (often inspired by his world travels). One of the most avant-garde couturiers, Galliano has stayed true to the spirit of Dior while pushing the house well into the modern age. Cate Blanchett, Charlize Theron, and Nicole Kidman have worn his showstopping creations on some of the biggest nights of their lives.
Born in Gibraltar in 1960, Galliano began his career in London. After launching his label there in 1984 and being named Britain's Designer of the Year in 1988, he decamped for Paris in 1991. It wasn't easy to make it in fashion's mightiest capital: He bunked on friends' floors as he struggled to get his business off the ground. But—with a little help from Anna Wintour, the Vogue editor—his breakthrough came with an all-black show staged at the artfully decaying Left Bank mansion of the socialite São Schlumberger.
In 1995, LVMH placed Galliano in charge of Givenchy's haute couture and ready-to-wear lines, an unheard-of coup for a British designer at a French house. Two years later, Galliano took another lofty step up the LVMH ladder, being crowned design director at Christian Dior. In addition to his obsessive work at Dior—where he oversees ad campaigns and even window displays—Galliano continues to design his own line, producing a dozen shows all told each year and, as ever, romancing his audiences with his knock-down-drag-out showmanship and soaring imagination.
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