The V&A to host the largest ever Dior exhibition - Everything you need to know

The V&A is set to stage the largest and most comprehensive Dior exhibition in UK history. The show – which is entitled Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams – is also the biggest fashion exhibition to be put on by the museum since the hugely popular Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty.

The exhibit will span from 1947 to present day, tracing the history and impact of the founder and the six other artistic directors to have helmed the house.

Here, we round up everything you need to know about what is sure to be one of 2019's most exciting exhibitions.

What will the exhibition cover?
Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams will trace the 71-year history of the House of Dior, beginning in 1947, when Christian Dior opened his couturier at 30 Avenue Montaigne, the site where it still stands today.

The major exhibition will trace this beginning through to present day – via the display of over 500 objects – looking at the impact of Dior's 'New Look' (and how it has been reinterpreted again and again throughout Dior's history) as well as the house's relationship with travel, flowers, history and so much more.

In addition to displaying some of the house's most iconic and memorable gowns, the exhibition will also highlight the breadth of creations that have come out of the fashion house over the years – and will pay tribute to those who have collaborated with Dior. This, entitled the 'Diorama' section, will showcase accessories from costume jewellery and hats to shoes, bags, archive lipstick and fragrance bottles.

Another highlight will no doubt be the 'Designers for Dior' section which will spotlight the work of the six creative directors who have helmed the label since Christian Dior passed away in 1957. It will celebrate how each designer has interpreted the vision of the label in their own way, while consistently sticking to the "codes of Dior".

Read more here

Is Dior the greatest fashion house of the past century?

Princess Margaret photographed by Cecil Beaton for her 21st birthday, wearing the matinée poétique dress by Dior

The Dior exhibition in Paris last year was – this isn’t too grandiose a word – a sensation. It spanned seven decades, beginning with a giddily feminine 1947 riposte to post-war austerity and culminating in Dior’s latest reinvention of itself under its current creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri, as a purveyor of dreamy but often practical clothes that have somehow managed to align themselves with a feminist message.

This sweeping history of the past century viewed through a prism of exquisite fashion was mounted with unprecedented imagination thanks to set designer Nathalie Crinière. Now Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams is transferring to London’s Victoria and Albert Museum – the largest Dior retrospective ever staged in the UK. Culturally, this will be one of 2019’s big talking points.

‘Dior is arguably the greatest fashion house of the past century,’ says Oriole Cullen, the V&A’s fashion and textile curator, who has been charged with reshaping the exhibition for the UK. Greater than Chanel or Balenciaga? ‘If you look at it across 70 years and all the designers who worked there, including Saint Laurent and Galliano… then, yes.’

Thanks to some impressive detective work on Cullen’s part, 60 per cent of the 500 objects in the V&A version (including make-up, photographs and accessories) were not in the Paris exhibition. All of the clothes featured are haute couture. Fortunately for the V&A, Christian Dior, that quintessentially French designer, was an incurable Anglophile, smitten from the get-go (his first trip to London was in 1926, at the age of 21). Escaping from his loving, sometimes smothering family, Dior saw England as a beacon of freedom. ‘There is no other country in the world, besides my own, whose way of life I like so much,’ he wrote. ‘I love English traditions, English politeness, English architecture…’ He even claimed to enjoy the food.

Read more here

Dior Saddle Bag: Officially 2018s most popular handbag

Every so often, a product becomes so cult that wearing it at the same time as your friend/colleague/mum isn't embarrassing but, rather, a bonding experience. E.g. the Nike Air Max, or Gucci logo belt.

This season, unfortunately for our pursestrings, the piece everyone is bonding over is the Dior Saddle Bag.

Ringing in at a healthy £2,100, it's one for the devoted fashion fans.

According to global fashion search platform, Lyst, the nostalgic piece has become the hottest women's product (not just handbag!) of the last financial quarter.

Having gone big on a social media campaign, on July 19 - the day it re-launched - over 100 hugely popular global influencers posted an image of themselves modelling the bag.

Read more here

Christian Dior Exhibition Coming to the V&A

The next major fashion exhibition to open in London was announced this weekend with a cryptic message delivered via topiaried hedges outside the British Embassy building in Paris. In town for the haute couture shows that run all this week, fashion editors would recognise the silhouette anywhere, even in bush form: Christian Dior’s iconic Bar jacket, an essential component of his revolutionary 1947 collection The New Look.

The bushes told them that the rumour was true. The blockbuster Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams exhibition held at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris from last summer until January 2018 would travel across the channel to London. Opening in February 2019 at the V&A in South Kensington, the retrospective will be the museum’s largest show since Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty in 2015, and the largest Dior exhibition ever staged in the UK.

More than 200 rare Dior couture garments will be shown, from Christian Dior’s original designs to Maria Grazia Chiuri’s contemporary feminist T-shirts, via the work of historic creative directors Yves Saint Laurent, Marc Bohan, Gianfranco Ferré, John Galliano and Raf Simons. They will be shown alongside accessories, makeup, fragrance, photography, film, magazines, and Christian Dior’s personal possessions, with a special new Anglophile section exploring Monsieur Dior’s relationship with the UK added on for British audiences, despite our Brexity ways.

Read more here