References
- Evans, Caroline. Fashion at the Edge: Spectacle, Modernity and Deathliness. Yale University Press, 2023 https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300270952/fashion-at-the-edge/
- Steele, Valerie. Fashion, Italian Style. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003 https://archive.org/details/fashionitalianst0000stee
- Thomas, Dana. Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster. New York: Penguin Press, 2007 https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/294861/deluxe-by-dana-thomas/
- Arnold, Rebecca. The American Look: Fashion, Sportswear and the Image of Women in 1930s and 1940s New York. London: I.B. Tauris, 2009 https://archive.org/details/americanlookfash0000arno
- Breward, Christopher. Fashion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003 https://archive.org/details/fashion0000brew
Clothing can say a lot, but it rarely speaks in full sentences. It's more about impressions, gestures, symbols. And in the world of Dior, every fold, flare, and fastening has something to say. What started as a "New Look" was never just about shape. It was about control. About shifting the mood of an entire postwar society through the silhouette of a single woman.
What the Dior exhibition made clear is that fashion is not just an art form but a record keeper. Haute couture, with its hours and hands and unwearable price tags, is the archive. The dream. It exists almost outside of time. Prêt-à-porter, on the other hand, is the echo. It responds to the moment. It gets lived in, changed by bodies that move fast and live fully.
Both carry weight. As fashion journalist Dana Thomas notes, haute couture is “a laboratory for ideas, craftsmanship and the possibilities of the handmade” (Thomas, 2007). You see that in the materials — satin that slips, wool that holds its ground, embroidery that turns stitches into status. Even now, with technology entering every level of production, the pieces shown in couture collections are still handmade. The invisible becomes visible — labour, technique, time. A single seam might represent five hours of careful work. It becomes almost sacred. Not because of what it looks like, but because of what it took to make.
Silhouettes do a lot of the talking. Dior’s signature shape, a nipped waist, a full skirt, became a cultural landmark in itself. At the time, it was both celebration and provocation. After years of rationed fabric and masculine war uniforms, suddenly: excess. Beauty. But also restriction. The garments demanded a particular body, a particular way of being. In that sense, they were political.
And fashion always is. As scholar Caroline Evans puts it, “Fashion is always in dialogue with the body, and through the body, with culture and society” (Evans, 2003).
Fashion and identity have always been entangled. To wear Dior isn’t just about taste. It’s about where you place yourself in a story. Often, that story is gendered, classed, and curated. Fashion creates versions of ourselves before we’ve even spoken.
It’s also a mirror. When the world shifts, so does what we wear. In the 1960s, hemlines climbed as ideas of freedom and youth rose. In the 1980s, shoulder pads grew as women entered boardrooms. “Fashion is never frivolous,” as Valerie Steele writes, “it reflects the times we live in” (Steele, 2005).
So maybe Dior isn’t about innovation in the loud sense. Maybe it’s more about repetition with variation. The new is rarely completely new. It’s often a reflection, a reconstruction. A tightening or softening of what already was.
But how things are put together still matters. Because in the end, clothes are never just clothes.
They’re language. They’re memory. They’re intent.