Pierre Cardin was among the few designers to start work at the house of Christian Dior on its very first day of business, Dec. 16, 1946. “The doors were to open at 9 o’clock and I was there at 8,” Cardin recalled in an interview in his Paris office. “I couldn’t wait.”
Cardin said a sensational atmosphere of joy and purpose permeated the atelier in those formative days as Dior, wearing a white smock over his suit and tie, guided fittings for his famous debut — the New Look. The radical silhouette, with its pinched waist, folds of voluminous fabric and long hemline, would seal the designer’s fame and launch his business with a rush of orders. But Cardin said Dior was wrought with panic and indecision as he assembled that historic, first collection.
“We remade the dresses at least 30 times,” said Cardin, who was then 20. “He was so indecisive. He had the hems brought down and then brought up. We were modifying everything until the very last minute before the show.
“He always worked with a long white [pointing stick]. He would point to a collar and say, ‘Change this like that.’ Or, ‘Take that hem up.’ He sat behind his desk all day long, overseeing fittings like that. He wanted the waist to be skinny. ‘Skinnier, skinnier!’ he’d say. The atelier pulled the waist tighter and tighter on the house model. It was so tight, she practically fainted.”
Cardin said the atelier worked around the clock before Dior’s first show. “We worked three days and three nights straight without ever going home. It was incredible. No one would have thought to complain. It was right after the war. We all wanted to be alive. We didn’t see the time pass. It was great to be young and in fashion, surrounded by all of that luxury after so many years of wanting.
“There was no fabric during the war, and those New Look dresses needed bolts of fabric,” continued Cardin. “It seemed so extravagant. It was such a hit. After the show, the ladies bought 30 dresses at a time. It was incredible. Completely impossible to imagine today.”
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To illustrate how quickly Dior’s fame grew, Cardin said in the three years he worked there, the staff increased from seven workers on the first day to more than 900 when he left in 1950. Cardin called Dior one of the most “elegant” and graceful personalities he worked with over his career. “It’s well-known that he was cultivated,” said Cardin. “But, as a human being, he was a fine man. He had a good inside. He had a beautiful interior light.”
Nonetheless, Cardin believed Dior was not “a modern man. He had wonderful taste. But he loved his mother and the Second Empire. He was rooted in the past.
“I never heard him raise his voice — not once,” continued Cardin. “And he was always graceful with his staff. He invited me to his country house. I loved being with him. We were one big happy family.”
Despite Dior’s jolly nature, Cardin said the designer was deeply ill at ease with his physical bearing.
“He was uncomfortable with his body. He was fat. He loved to eat. I think he would eat 500 grams of bonbons a day. He loved sweets! He was far from being a sexy man. I think he suffered for it.”
Cardin described his manner as “quite effeminate. He was not virile at all. He was always making jokes. He was erudite. He had a tenderness about him.”
His kindness was such that when Cardin, who was responsible for coats in Dior’s atelier, told his mentor he was leaving to start his own business, Dior encouraged him.
“He was the first to congratulate me,” he said. “On my first day of business, he sent me 184 roses. That was his way — to be generous.” As a parting gift, Dior gave Cardin a set of Jean Cocteau’s plays, which he inscribed with kind words. They are among Cardin’s cherished belongings and sit on a bookshelf in his office today.
“What he taught me most was elegance and class,” said Cardin. “He also introduced me to all of the people that counted at the time — Berard, Cocteau, etc. You had to get something from being around that type of man. It was very enriching.”
Cardin said the shock of Dior’s sudden death was difficult to describe. “Everyone in Paris was stunned. It was like the president had died. The streets were black. The church was full of flowers. It was so crowded, you couldn’t enter the church.”
Though Cardin’s name was among those circulated as a possible replacement for Dior after his death, Dior’s young prodigy, Yves Saint Laurent, was named. “I always found him [Saint Laurent] very shy and tired,” said Cardin, who went on to achieve his own success with a wacky, space-age look.
“I had a real affection for the house,” he added. “I owe everything I am to Monsieur Dior.”