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LIZ JONES FASHION THERAPY: Christian Dior, who made Diana dazzle and Elizabeth Taylor lovelier, is subject of new Harrods exhibition

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Who knew Christian Dior - that most French of the luxury brands - had such close ties with the UK?

A new exhibition at Harrods - showcasing designs from his first collection in 1947 to the present day - is celebrating the fact that the father of modern fashion opened a boutique within the Knightsbridge department store  in 1953.

Monsieur Dior was an Anglophile: he loved Scottish tweed and houndstooth, even bedecking bottles of scent with the check.

And the British certainly loved him back. Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret were stopped only from buying his wares by their father, who thought the designs too shocking during the austere, post-war years.

Princess Diana wearing Dior in 1996, left, and Elizabeth Taylor in Dior at the 1961 Academy Awards

This Harrods display is a wonderful exhibition, showing how Christian Dior single-handedly invented the modern luxury brand and came up with the idea of dressing women head-to-toe, from stockings to scent.

He also, rather surprisingly, gave us fast fashion. Before Dior, trends moved carefully and incrementally. But Dior introduced a new shape and way of dressing every season. As Nancy Mitford wrote: 'My life has been made a desert of gloom by the collections which, at one stroke, render all one's clothes unwearable!'

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There was his New Look of 1947, with its skirt just 14 in from the ground, made with padded hips and intricate pleats. It flew shockingly in the face of  post-war austerity with its extravagance, using 41 m of silk in just one dress.

Dior also gave us luxury - a dress was never less than £2,500 in today's money - and so many trends we still wear today: the sack dress, asymmetry, peplums, pockets, horseshoe necklines.

He thought shoes, which until then had always been a plain, mostly black afterthought, were important and employed Roger Vivier as in-house designer.

'Christian Dior single-handedly invented the modern luxury brand and came up with the idea of dressing women head-to-toe, from stockings to scent'

There are some real, rare gems on show in this exhibition, such as the 1947 Corolle or Flower two-piece, which gave women long limbs, like the stems of a flower, and a softness and sexiness entirely missing during the war years.

There is a Pompom worn by Rita Hayworth in 1947, an afternoon suit that is so bulky you realise she was a big girl!

Contrast this with the teeny knit gown over trousers worn by Emma Watson in 2012, or the slender midnight blue gown with puddle train worn by Jennifer Lawrence earlier this year (it proves the brand is in safe hands with Raf Simons), and you can see how stars have, literally, become smaller and smaller.

Christian Dior pictured fitting model Dorothy Emms for a dress while chief fitter Miss Brown looks on

Here, too, is the lemon chiffon and ivory faille dress worn by Elizabeth Taylor to the Oscars in 1961, with its teeny waist, the skirt embroidered with roses, and a short silver sequin tulle dress worn by Audrey Hepburn in 1960 that took hundreds of hours to make.

the stars loved his clothes, and Christian Dior loved women. But more than any other designer he wanted the woman to fit the clothes, not the other way around. He hated the wartime look of heavy shoes and square, boxy shoulders.

He made a Degas bodice, to flatten the bust of slim women, to make them 'younger, more fragile', and the Tudor bodice for the fuller-figured, making the bosom swell above the dress, again to make the wearer 'younger, more romantic': all his corsets gave women the ideal of the slim midriff.

His clothes were never easy or sporty but, in 1957, just before he died of a heart attack - in a spa of all places - aged just 52, Dior did at last give women the sack dress, which concealed all flaws, and which was an early precursor of the liberation that was to come in the next decade.

Ironically, given the scandal he brought upon the house, you can also see the genius that was John Galliano, who was sacked by Dior after he was found guilty of making anti-Semitic remarks in a Paris cafe in 2011.

Here is the midnight blue gown edged with black lace he made for the Princess of Wales in 1996, which she wore to the Metropolitan Museum in New York: you can see, peeking inside, the internal structure that gave her such a great hourglass shape.

And here is the Galliano gown worn by Charlize Theron in the J'Adore advert: it is a backless chiffon column of gold: sensuous and sinewy and, above all, sexy, topped off with that Belle Epoque necklace that made her neck as long as a swan's.

A John Galliano creation for Dior at Paris Fashion Week 2011, left, and the designer after his show, right

I have a few niggles. The archive footage at the entrance to the exhibition should have subtitles because it's hard to hear; the spotlights make some of the exhibition notes difficult to read, but, mostly, I'd have loved to have seen even more Dior.

Yet the exhibition ultimately works: I left feeling I had to have one of the label's classic quilted bags, or at least a small bottle of the new perfume, Gris Montaigne.

And I think, too, that those young British princesses were right to clamour for Dior. They were not being unpatriotic, they knew it was their job to cheer us up.

It will be wonderful if Raf Simons were to be summoned to the Palace as soon as the Duchess of Cambridge has given birth.

The exhibition is open daily and is free. Special events will be taking place until mid April. Visit harrods.com for details.

 







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