DIORISSIMO! Dior & His Decorators

We like nothing better than looking at the past through new eyes. It's like seeing the thing we have seen, a thing we are seemingly familiar with—anew.
We take a New Look.

Maureen Footer's second book Dior and his Decorators opens our eyes to the world of the great Christian Dior in a way we haven't considered—through his decorators. Tracing the paths of Georges Geffroy and Victor Grandpierre, Footer threads the finest skeins of silk through Postwar Europe's beau monde for her readers, unearthing the rooms of these two decorators and their influence on Christian Dior. The decoration of Dior's first couture house was Grandpierre's vision. The antisceptic chic established in the fifties still defines the house today—in appearance and in branding—testimony to his unerring eye. Of course, Dior's chic was his inspiration, there's nothing quite like Dior, as Dior and his Decorators affirms.

Victor Grandpierre—A Study in Elegance and Understatement.

As witnessed here in one of his clients' chateau, Grandpierre, Christian Dior's decorator, was consistent in his personal design aesthetic, swanning from room to room reiterating elegance and understatement with impeccable French furniture, couture details, and subtle color. This 'Blue' Room even hints of that gray— Dior Gray. Both decorators were asked to decorate Dior's Paris townhouse and the results reflected the soigne of Dior's New Look.

Rene Gruau's evocative illustration for perfumes Miss Dior and Diorama, 1955.

Dior's perfume counter at 30, ave. Montaigne, 

—the first year of the House of DIOR was in residence.

In Christian Dior's Georges Geffroy decorated Drawing Room, all of Grandpierre's rules applied. There is an undisputable Elegance, coupled with discipline. Nothing more—Nothing less.

Both decorators were asked to decorate Dior's Paris townhouse.

In Dior's Winter Garden room, a ball gown from his 1953 collection dominates.

It is difficult to fathom the impact that Christian Dior made on couture during his brief tenure at the helm of Dior. The New Look debuted in 1947, and in just ten years Dior would be dead. His decorators continued their work as seen in the rooms Footer presents in the book and their rooms are the greater for having encountered Dior.

Dior offered this on Elegance in his book Le Petit Dictionnaire de la Mode, "This is a word that would need a book to give it its right definition!... "

For us, fortunately, we have Dior and his Decorators, undeniably elegant.