The style list: Le Théâtre Dior

The exhibition, at The Dubai Mall from November 9 to November 24, will celebrate the enduring talent of Christian Dior, and his iconic Bar Suit.

The original Bar Suit with a scaled-down replica. Photo by Patrick Demarchelier

An exhibition at The Dubai Mall this month will celebrate the enduring talent of designer Christian Dior. Running from November 9 to 24 in the mall’s Fashion Catwalk Atrium, the aptly entitled Le Théâtre Dior will offer a rare insight into the world of couture, which, with its air of beauty and playfulness, is nothing if not fashion theatre.

The exhibition will lead viewers on a chronological journey from Dior’s first collection in 1947 to the present day, and will feature clothes, sketches, inspiration boards and photographs. In total, Le Théâtre Dior comprises 12 chapters, charting the couture collections as well as Dior’s inspirations, collaborations with celebrities, admiration for the arts (he started as a gallery owner before the lure of fashion took him on another path) and even his obsession with gold. The work of his successors is showcased, too, highlighting the breadth of talent that has helped sustain the house since the untimely death of its founder in 1957 – from a youthful Yves Saint Laurent, Marc Bohan and Gianfranco Ferré, through to the turbulent years under John Galliano and the work of current artistic director Raf Simons.

A wide-reaching exhibition that sets out to capture the mindset of Monsieur Dior (as he is still known to this day) himself, this is a magical snapshot of the world he created and that has been so expertly buoyed by his successors.

Sixty of the house of Dior's most timeless looks have been painstakingly reproduced in the atelier, and are being presented in exact but scaled-down versions. Every detail of the miniature outfits remains true to the original, down to the techniques and even the fabrics used. As some of the earliest pieces are now almost 70 years old, these fabrics are exceedingly rare.

Dior’s legendary first collection, Corelle, will be displayed on a set of moving mannequins that travel through a reimagined salon, capturing the experience of a catwalk show of the day. Corelle is the collection that launched the solo career of Monsieur Dior – and it is arguably the house’s most iconic to date.

Dior presented this first collection of outfits on February 12, 1947, essentially recharting the course of fashion with a bold new silhouette for austerity-ridden, post-war Europe. Unlike other designers of the time, Dior paid scant regard to the cost of fabric per skirt and instead swathed his models in metres of intricately pleated wool. Gone was the utilitarian practicality that so typified the age.

During the war, many women had toiled in factories and on farms, taking on the roles left vacant by absent men. The years of rationing that followed meant that commonplace items became expensive and hard to come by.

In turn, fashion took on a decidedly stark air, with durable fabrics cut into boxy, efficient shapes and shoes that were sensible and square-toed. With his first collection, Dior single-handedly swept all that aside. He called it Corelle after an imagined flower woman with “a waist as slim as a vine and a skirt as wide as a flower corolla”, he said.

He carved dramatic suit jackets from pale shantung silk sculpted into bold shapes, with tiny wasp waists and padded peplums to create a feminine hourglass effect. The skirts had padded hips and fell to mid-calf in decadent circular cuts. Wrap dresses with elegant, high crossover collars were balanced with full skirts. The press immediately dubbed the collection the “New Look”.

This was also the debut of the now iconic Bar Suit. Interestingly, all of Dior’s successors have chosen to revisit this classic suit, which so captivated audiences back in 1947, highlighting its importance to the house’s core DNA and firmly establishing it in the annals of history as a genuine fashion icon.

Read this and other fashion-, jewellery- and lifestyle-related stories in Luxury magazine, out with The National on Thursday, November 5.