Page 66 - The Bite Magazine

Erwin Blumenfeld. Historic shots include

Irving Penn’s portray of the Illusionniste

coat from the Autumn-Winter 1950

Oblique line with its huge collar and

broad sleeves, accentuated by the

photographer’s use of daylight and the

subtlety of the studio to capture these

dramatic images. While black and white

photographs abstract the clothing to

the essentials in terms of structure

and geometry rather than colour and

material, other photographers captured

the mood of the times with authentic

settings in the City of Light, focusing on

the couturier’s intrinsically Parisian flair.

Clifford Coffin’s shot of a backlit pose

in profile highlighted the bustle of the

Cocotte dress while the vertical lines of

the window and the slant of the broom

accentuate the garment’s geometry.

Henry Clarke’s photograph of a hat,

a glass of champagne, a mirror and

the model Dovima, was combined

to epitomise chic at the restaurant

Lapérouse, while the romantic and

theatrical vision of Dior’s evening

and ball gowns were captured by the

likes of Willy Maywald, Louise Dahl-

Wolfe and Norman Parkinson.

In ‘Portraits of Christian Dior’, we

get an insight into the couturier’s

character and pose. Having lost

his childhood home in the 1930s,

following the Wall Street crash of

1929, Christian Dior was known to

attain a certain pose in photographs

as if to demonstrate his success and

convey his values. His portraits by

Brassaï and Cecil Beaton were often

taken in the setting of his homes

such as the apartment on rue Royale

or the town house on boulevard

Jules-Sandeau, where the décor revealed

key aspects of the man and his tastes

including his love of art. Dior is said to

have portrayed an image of a simple

man, where his intentionally casual pose

of smoking a cigar and sporting a blazer,

sitting on a low wall or playing cards in his

garden at cocktail time was captured by

Lord Snowdon and Louise Dahl-Wolfe.

However, there is one portrait by Yousuf

Karsh that reveals his dual personality

or the “other himself” as he describes it,

where the photographer playing on his

signature use of contrasting shadow and

light, presents two men: the couturier

playing a role in the limelight and the shy

man hiding in the shadows who does not

like to be exposed, “incapable of playing

that role.”

The following pages reveals the artistic

ways in which the great photographers of

the day saw Dior through their lenses and

how their photographic work harmonised

with the distinguishing characteristics

of the fashion house. Using Dior’s

desire of a nostalgic eighteenth-century

atmosphere as the perfect backdrop of

subtle elegance for his dresses, Serge

Balkin captured the famous New Look

collection for the first story that

Vogue

devoted to the new couturier. Since

then, photographers from Louise Dahl-

Wolfe to Patrick Demarchelier have

used this couture house ‘photo studio’

to compose images with dual messages,

superimposing day-to-day couture life

over the presentation of new fashion.

While Louise Dahl-Wolfe offset the

slender silhouette of a Dior model

against the stalwart line of saleswomen

waiting for buyers, Willy Maywald and

Patrick Demarchelier revealed what goes

on behind the scenes is as important as

what occurs at the front of the fashion

house and Loomis Dean illustrated the

never-ending work of fashion in tirelessly

launching new designs by placing the

models around a ladder.

We then move from fashion into beauty

for a moment where we learn in 1960

the House of Dior’s advertisement

for lipstick marked their first use of

photography.The alluring black and white

print by Studio Harcourt, the renowned

celebrity portrait studio, portrayed a

woman’s face hidden in the shadow of

an elegant dark hat. All that could be

seen is the oval hat and her sensuous

lips, which began a revolution in lipstick

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Page 66 - The Bite Magazine - Issue 11