“Miss Dior: A Story of Courage and Couture,” (publishing Nov. 9 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux), Justine Picardie’s new book about the extraordinary lives of Christian Dior, and his youngest sister Catherine, before, during and after World War II, looks at the siblings’ close relationship and resilience, in the face of penury, death and danger, particularly during the Nazi occupation of France, and how they both sought solace, and meaning, in beauty, industry and nature.
Picardie, the British journalist, author and former Harper’s Bazaar U.K. editor, believes the siblings’ lifelong love of gardens, flowers and tending to the soil — a passion inherited from their mother, Madeleine Dior — not only united and inspired them, but also helped them make sense of their chaotic early lives, and stave off despair.
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The “Miss Dior” in the title refers both to the well-known (and newly updated) fragrance that Christian released shortly after the war, and to the flower-dusted dress with its hand-sewn petals and green satin leaves, part of the spring couture collection presented in 1949, just two years after the designer wowed the fashion world with his radical “New Look.”
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But mostly, the title refers to Catherine: Christian named what he called “the fragrance of love” for his sister, who’d been a member of the French Resistance and survived the German death camp Ravensbrück.
Catherine would continue to inspire him, stand by him and supply the fresh roses for the Miss Dior fragrance, long after the war ended and Christian Dior became one of the most famous 20th-century designers.
Although Catherine may have been her brother’s favorite sibling and confidant — and she did wear some of his couture pieces on special occasions — she generally opted for trousers and simpler fare while cultivating her fields of roses in Provence, and did not talk about her wartime experiences.
After the liberation of France by the Allied Powers, she was garlanded with honors, but preferred to live a quiet life, running the flower business that she built after returning home, injured and ill, from Ravensbrück, and working in the rose gardens of her home at Les Naÿssès, near Grasse, in Provence.
While Catherine has been talked about before, Anne Sebba’s 2016 book “Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved and Died Under Nazi Occupation” references her, she’s remained a mystery — one that Picardie could not resist exploring.
“His story is so dramatic — as is hers — but it’s never been told, and I wanted to be true to her,” said Picardie, whose previous books include “Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life,” over lunch at Chiltern Firehouse in London.
Picardie had another reason for pulling Catherine’s story out of the shadows: “I owe it to Catherine, and to the other silenced women, for their voices to be heard.” She said her nearly 10 years of research and writing made it clear that “you cannot just be an observer of history. Do what you believe in, and listen to the voices that would otherwise be silenced.”
While “Miss Dior” may be a page-turner, it’s not an easy read: Picardie delves as far as she can into the life of Catherine, who gave only a handful of interviews in her lifetime, and who died before Picardie had even heard of her.
She traces Catherine’s life from pampered bourgeois child to fearless Resistance agent known as “Caro” — Dior’s new Caro bag is named for her — to the ill and emaciated young woman who returned to Paris from Ravensbrück, to the professional gardener.
During the interview, Picardie even speculates that Dior’s “New Look,” with all of its sculpted padding, rounded edges and miles of rich fabric, came partly from seeing his sister — and other camp survivors — step off the train from Germany.
“He didn’t recognize her, she was so emaciated,” said Picardie, wondering if Christian made those softly padded clothes “as a form of protection.” Picardie believes the Miss Dior fragrance, with its notes of bergamot, patchouli, oakmoss, jasmine and rose, came from a similar place, and was meant to serve as an embrace.
“Christian’s relationship with Catherine is integral to his vision, both as a couturier and as a perfume-maker. He loved his sister, and he respected her, and, for me, his vision arises out of that love and respect and loyalty. It’s not highly sexualized objectification, there’s something much more loving about it.”
She was dogged in her research. In addition to interviewing Dior family friends and descendants of Catherine’s F2 comrades, and poring over memoirs and journals from French resistants, Picardie also traveled to Ravensbrück multiple times.
The book includes pictures of the poignant sketches, small objects and mementos made in secret — from scraps — by Catherine’s fellow prisoners.
She ploughed through tens of thousands of badly organized documents from the French military archives to find Catherine’s testimony in the trial of “Rue de la Pompe Gestapo,” the French thugs who tortured her, and other members of the F2 resistance network.
She visited Les Naÿssès in Provence, near Grasse, which Catherine inherited from her father, and where her roses are still harvested for the “Miss Dior” fragrance. She also spent time at La Colle Noire, Christian’s splendid home near Les Naÿssès, with its vast fruit and flower orchards, and Olympic-sized swimming pool.
Picardie also poked around the apartment at 10 Rue Royale in Paris, where Christian lived during the war, when he was working as a designer at the couture house of Lucien Lelong. He allowed Catherine and her fellow F2 comrades to hide there when they were being hunted by the Gestapo in 1944.
In the book, the apartment’s current occupant shows Picardie a ladder leading to a windowless attic where Catherine presumably hid, although the Gestapo would eventually capture and imprison her in the summer of 1944.
Picardie also returned to the place where it all began: Les Rhumbs, the villa in Granville, Normandy where Christian and his siblings grew up — and which they were forced to quit after Dior’s wealthy father lost his fortune in a bad investment. It is now Musée Christian Dior, with Catherine having served as its honorary president from 1999 until her death.
The author describes each visit in detail because, “I wanted to take readers on a journey with me, and I am interested in places where the veil between the past and the present becomes translucent, where the relationship between the living and the dead is most tangible,” she said.
Nowhere is that more evident than in Normandy and Provence, where roses continue to bloom the siblings’ past and present homes. Although Catherine’s former home at Les Naÿssès is now privately owned by a different family, the flowers she grew are still used in the Miss Dior fragrance.
“Catherine had her hands in the earth of Provence — the same earth on which battles were fought — growing and tending to her roses. That was how she recovered,” said Picardie, adding that Catherine brought in the last rose harvest shortly before her death at 91 in 2008.
Christian also turned to nature for solace: Picardie believes he began the process of creating the Miss Dior fragrance during the war, and when Catherine was still working in the French Resistance, in an act of hope, and defiance, of the bleakness around him.
Miss Dior was spritzed around the room — and the entire maison at 30 Avenue Montaigne — where Dior’s debut show unfolded in 1947, while the fragrance was released later that year. In the book, Dior is quoted as saying it took him four years to develop Miss Dior, meaning that he was already working on it — or at the very least thinking about it — long before the war ended.
Miss Dior, Picardie said, “is the fragrance of love — as it’s famously been sold — but to me it’s the fragrance of freedom, and the love of a brother for a sister. There is a real tenderness to it.”
The siblings’ love — and legacy — lives on: Dior’s creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri worked Catherine’s passion for gardening in her spring 2020 collection and debuted the Caro bag — nodding to Catherine’s code name — at the brand’s 2021 cruise show last summer.
Meanwhile the facade of the Madeleine church, built in the 19th century in the style of a Greek temple, is now draped in a giant ad for the new Miss Dior Eau de Parfum, which earlier this year was updated with notes from the delicate centifolia rose. (The ad covers major scaffolding and restoration work on the facade, which is being funded by the city of Paris.)
The fragrance brand, owned by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, certainly picked a meaningful spot, overlooking Christian’s wartime home, and Catherine’s refuge, at 10 Rue Royale.