The Rise and Rise of Dior

Dior has had some of the most turbulent history of any Heritage brand they've had not one but two head designers fired and they've come back from the brink of collapse at least four times but now they're one of the most respected and beloved brands for both men's and women's wear so how did they survive so long Dior was begun as Christian Dior in 1946 by business partner could technically owned the company and a then 31 year old Christian Dior in the wake of World War II Dior quickly opened his couturier and showed his debut collection less than three months after the company was formed on the 12th of February 1947. the company peaked early with his debut collection becoming one of the most important in all of fashion history The Collection introduced the world to the teller bar which became known as the new look as a combat against the fashion rationing scene in the war that left women in minimal utilitarian considerably much less feminine style dresses the skirt was made of significantly more fabric than was permitted both legally and socially during the war and was seen as an extreme display of luxury and wealth all within this hyper-feminine aesthetic the women at the time were so excited to be able to be feminine again that the look took the World by storm and became an immediate classic that is still used as a reference point in almost every Dior collection to this date The Collection single-handedly reignited French Couture to its former glory from before the war and saw his house become so instantly successful that by only the following year in 1948 he'd already opened a ready-to-wear store on Fifth Avenue in New York and expanded the business into licensing perfumes which I actually have a video on on my second channel that goes over Beauty Brands just in case you're interested so click on this link for that and I'll link it again at the end of the video shoes Handbags and hats at the end of 1949 Dior made up 75 of paris's fashion exports and five percent of France's total export Revenue decades before globalization by 1955 Dior had added lipsticks ties lingerie jewelry and scarves and he even had a book to speak couturier so Christian Dior was on top of the world of luxury a must-have for the fashionable Elite but this high would not last forever as a mere two years later in 1957 the orbit unexpectedly pass away from his third heart attack on the 24th of October as was the norm at the time there was talk of shutting down the labor altogether but because it was so impactful not only to Fashion but to France's GDP the company decided to honor Christian dior's wish that he would be succeeded by isana raw who would show his first collection spring summer 58 just a few months after his mentor's death The Collection would reinvent what was expected from Dior instead of dior's signature cinched waist and close-fitting Silhouettes he showed an extremely unexpected more fluid silhouette that was inspired from Christian dior's 1955 A-line skirts but this time pulled up to the bust the new aesthetic of Dior was extremely successful and saved the company from potential Financial ruin meaning sonar over this and the following few seasons made his Mark at Dior with signatures of using less Fabric and are using a lighter approach to facings that once again saw Dior change the course of fashion history but the success of the first collection wouldn't continue the 1959 hobble skirt collection and the 1960 beatnik collection were all widely panned by critics and clients and the higher upset Dior were not happy it was directly because of the beatnik collection that included the first use of leather in couture clothing that was the final straw for Marcel bussak who still owned the company all these years later he was furious with the reviews and took no haste to fire ivesan Iran from Dior leaving them without a head designer actually because of this illegal termination news on a wrong successfully sued the household breach of contract and ended up using the money to start his own house so it does come full Circle for him he was destroyed at the time and suffered a breakdown because of the way that he was treated meanwhile at Dior Mark Bowen was named as the next successor Mark bone was the longest reigning head of Dior longer even than Christian Dior himself and he was exceptionally successful at pleasing individual clients and finding exactly what each woman wanted in particular Bowen's designs Define the 60s especially but were successful throughout the years his skills were in subtlety consistent and desirable luxury that Revisited Christian dior's codes more closely though updated for a new 60s woman as well as continuing to have successful collections in the almost 30 years he was at the house Owen oversaw very large company expansions to broaden their product offering including the opening of a French ready to wear line Miss Dior and children's wear line baby Dior in 1967 the latter of which opened his own dedicated Boutique in Paris in the same year 1967 and it was diffusion line named Christian Dior codone in 38 they saw Dior perfumes to Mo Hennessy in 1968. debuted dior's first timepiece in 1968 created a cosmetic line to expand on their nail polish in 1969 and began Dior mature in 1970. however despite the legitimate success of Dior that was worth at least 65 million dollars as that was what was offered by Cartier at the time their majority shareholder Marcel busak had been losing money at 20 million dollars per year and was at a hundred million dollars in debt due to Simply having too many companies that were failing so in a very long and publicized downfall the parent company was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1979 which ultimately led the company to be sold to the willow Brothers in 1980. the willow Brothers had no experience in luxury fashion or textiles leaving many to be skeptical of how the business would continue and Skeptics were not wrong the willow Brothers soon went bankrupt and began to put Dior into Administration which would have probably killed the brand altogether however this is when in 1984 Bernardino and his Investment Group stepped in he appointed himself as the CEO and managing director of Dior later that year and in 1985 restructured the entire business as a Holdings company to create the lvmh Louis Vuitton Mo Hennessy that we know today Dior as a company was already profitable so there was no rush to turn the company around but a few years later in 1989 Mark Bowen would leave the company and diorwood name gianfranco Ferry as the new artistic director Ferry was already a respected designer so it wasn't exactly an unexpected placement by any means but gianfranco was at the brand for seven years total and he kept the sales just fine though the business wasn't as explosive as Arno wanted actually he was very open about his efforts in trying to make Dior the biggest name in prison fashion something which it turned out fairy would never really be able to bring to Dior so Ferry announced his departure with this spring summer 97 ready to wear collection being his last but surprisingly they didn't name his successor this was very obviously a marketing tactic from Arno and it didn't really fool anybody but it did work and the whole Fashion World was waiting for who Dior would appoint a point debuting in the Couture collection spring summer 97 John Galliano was named creative director having been controversially poached from Givenchy he was exceptionally talented and exactly the kind of media loving shake-up Arno wanted for the brand even from the first collection though simple in comparison to what was to come the collection was not only creatively exceptional but technically really impressive repopularizing the buyer's cart for the 90s which trickled down into a major bias cut Trend that was all over the decade and the impact of the collection doesn't end there in the same year 1996 the theme for the met and the Met Gala was Dior and it was heavily publicized even Princess Diana would attend the evening which in fact was her only Met Gala to which she wore the first look from his first Dior Couture show along with a Dior shushu bag this exploded the popularity of the bag so much that it was renamed to the lady diorbag in her honor and still almost 30 years later is one of the biggest cash cows for the company needless to say galliano's Reign at Dior especially the time that coincided with hedislamaine who popularized Dior Homme from 2001 to 2007 was an exceptional time in fashion history and he is often considered the best designer to head a Heritage brand ever despite having several many collections that would not be okay now this success is often attributed to his extreme Talent as a designer I also think it has to do with the codes of the house specifically their history of this extreme luxury that started with the opulence that was the new look allowed him to show this ridiculously grandiose design that he became known for I really wish the shows were less offensively themed because it didn't need it it would have been good design without and now it feels bad to admit to liking these beautiful pieces because of the completely unnecessarily offensive context in which many of them were shown obviously at the time however they weren't known to be offensive as widely and specifically the Couture collections were heavily anticipated season on season for their eclectic opulence that is now reinvented each and every year with by far his most successful products being the saddle bag designed in 1999 Dior t-shirt from Autumn winter o1 which spanned its own perfume series Galliano received the British commander of the British Empire award and Francis Legion boner so he was at the height of fashion the top of the world completely untouchable until he wasn't Galliano was arrested on February 24 2011 for allegedly shouting racist rhetoric while in a cafe just four days later video evidence surfaced and it was much worse than the public had thought with Galliano calmly telling two women that he loves Hitler and that they would be dead if Hitler had had his way the video is awful but fortunately because of public outcry this was not brushed under the rug and he was immediately suspended for his position but after Natalie Portman who was the face of Mr orchary perfume quit because she is a Jewish woman wanted nothing to do with thaliano they officially fired him leaving Chris Van Ash as the only title creative director of the brand who was the head of Dior Hong from 2007. in the collection that shortly preceded this debacle Autumn winter 11 ready to wear one of the Dior Executives Sydney toledano took to the catwalk to give a speech distancing themselves from Galliano I think in a way they were lucky as we discussed in the Balenciaga video a short while ago a large portion of Heritage brands from Europe had strong ties to the Nazi party because there really was no way for a business to survive the war unless they sided with Hitler but because Dior was started at the very end of the war they have much weaker ties to the Nazi party than Chanel Balenciaga Louboutin or even non-luxury Brands like Puma and Adidas for example I genuinely think that if he was caught saying the things that he said as the head of any other brand with stronger ties to the Nazi party the entire brand would have gone under especially because for a long time dior's future was looking very Rocky smartly they laid low for a good while following this then put out seven painfully made collections designed by Bill Gayton who had been working as creative director since galliano's firing just without officially being appointed as creative director I honestly really dislike these collections I don't know if this was tactical to keep the company low profile or not but they're either painfully dull or whatever monstrosity that this is they actually didn't name a successor for over a year until on April 9 2012 RAF Simmons was named as the new creative director at Dior with his first collection being Autumn winter 2012 Couture actually I did have a rash Simmons video a few weeks ago and I do go into more detail in that video so click on this link for that but in a nutshell RAV put out three and a half years worth of collections for Dior and he did not have a great time looking back these collections are incredible they fuse rafts and dior's New Look aesthetic so perfectly and they are major collector items now but at the time they were not accepted in the same light with many people having lots of various negative opinions about his appointment and his collections as a whole RAF didn't last longer Dior which is a real shame because now this period is considered one of the strongest in the Brand's history coming to a surprise end in 2015 after the spring summer 16 show a full nine months went by yet again without the head of women's wear live in Chris Brown alone as the head of menswear yet again but for women's wear eventually Maria grazia took over two great Fanfare with her first collection being spring summer 17 which still to this day is my favorite of her Dior collections it was the first Heritage brand to have a female designer as the creative director and one of the first instances we ever saw in the modern era of a company being so strong in their stands for social justice following Chanel's lead at their feminist spring summer 15 show though this does come after a scandal with Carl in which he said some very misogynistic stuff in the media but really at this time feminism had only just started to be looked at positively by The Wider public in the 2010s there was a lot of misogynistic talk about feminism basically lying about what the movement was about even Emma Watson took a major hit on her career when she said that she was a feminist and South Korea one of the largest consumers of luxury goods still has a very strong anti-feminist movement one that far outweighs their feminist movement so really it was a risk for a major company to stand for equity in this way and they did see some backlash though mostly it was widely positive critiques a couple of years later Kim Jones would joined your home for spring summer 19 in a show that had mixed reviews though mostly positive especially with critics commenting on his collaboration with cause for the floral sculpture and with Matthew Williams at a leagues for the closures on most of the garments and bags I know it was commercially successful as well as their sales in 2019 went up 15 on the previous year which is a huge percentage considering their revenue was 53.7 billion euros if you include all of Revenue sources of Dior all of which affected obviously by the huge marketing Fanfare that is the fashion shows at this point both the men's and women's wear designers at Dior are big names in fashion which is really the first time this has happened so strongly they're probably more because of the popularization of menswear than anything else what Dior is doing with this I think it's quite smart by pushing both the designers as figureheads for the company gives both women and men someone to follow individually are someone that they respect while also shielding the company from another Guardian situation in all honesty I don't know if this is the tactic they are using or if this is some kind of positive byproduct of having two exceptional designers heading both sides by the way I think it's smart and it gives us so much more to look forward to as consumers which brings us to the pre-4 show that just showed for Dior men's the prequel show was set up in Egypt in front of the Pyramids of Giza and obviously I knew about this plan for a while because Dior announced it months ago but knowing that the last Egyptian show they did was Galliano spring summer 04 Couture and how offensive it is in today's climate not only for using Egyptian culture as an aesthetic but also for darkening at least these two models his skins I was skeptical about what they would show but Kim actually grew up in Africa not in Egypt specifically but Botswana Tanzania Ethiopia Kenya and Ghana and so he feels a strong connection to the continent so I ended up actually really looking forward to a love letter to his childhood home continent and that is exactly what we got Kim always being one for a spectacle absolutely delivered with this collection the sort of development on his suited streetwear inspired signature look that was just a very handsome Triumph for Dior making me very very excited to see the actual menswear collection in a few weeks for Autumn winter 23 which maybe I'll try to get a video on specifically Dior men's if that is something that you're interested in there are no promises because it's a short amount of time away all in all Dior is in its peak era while also not being overbearing both Kim and Maria have latent longevity built into their design style they're both creating great profits for the company and are widely loved but private enough to make a great future for the company together one I hope lasts a really long time thank you so much for watching subscribe and hit the notification Bell for more videos like this one and check out my video on RAF Simmons now

Channel: understitch,

Views: 84,367

Keywords: dior, christian dior, galliano, yves saint laurent, marc bohan, maria grazia chiuri, kim jones, lvmh, bernard arnault, dior mens, dior pre-fall 2023, dior egypt, dior giza, dior egyptian fashion show, dior egyptian collection, dior homme, Dior jimin

Id: MwAeQG9qXaU

Length: 16min 40sec (1000 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 04 2022