Christian Dior Salon Series at the Glenbow Museum
Photo by Honey Creative
When I heard a year ago about the Christian Dior exhibition coming to the Glenbow Museum I was possibly the most excited person in Calgary. I had been sad to miss the original installation by curator Dr. Alexandra Palmer, at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto in 2017, so when the team at the Glenbow asked me to do a private tour and speak about the history of Christian Dior at their salon series I was more than ready!
The first night sold out in a few days so we added two more evenings which all sold out as well! The support for this exhibition has been amazing full stop and I had such a great time giving people a special perspective on Dior and the art of haute couture. It’s wonderful to have a show like this happen in our city and it’s a great opportunity to share the beauty of handcrafted fashion with other passionate people!
Photo courtesy of the Glenbow
We had 40 people each night and everyone showed up dressed to the nines! So many people have been captivated by this opportunity to explore fashion history. Such great groups!
Photo courtesy of the Glenbow
The exhibition is wonderfully approachable and you can spend as long or as little as you like and still get a glimpse of what it was like at that time for fashion consumers. Each of the suits and dresses, jewelry, fragrances, and ephemera are from the collection of the ROM, most of which were donated to the museum. In some cases the women who owned the gowns were still alive and the curator met with them to learn the story of their personal piece of couture and the circumstances of where they wore them. For example the dress called Venus was purchased at a store in Florida as a surprise for a 16 year old’s coming out party. Can you imagine being surprised with a dress like that at 16? Lucky girl! Or Auteuil, a houndstooth suit with a velvet collar owned by a woman who later removed the aggressive bustle and shortened the very long hemline. What’s inspiring about the way people wore their clothes in the late 1940s is in that reimagining of a suit that was indeed an investment.
Photo courtesy of the Glenbow
Austerity measures after the war meant rationing was in place which made Dior a target of protests for being flagrant with his designs. The “new look” that he was so famous for was not just a silhouette with a tiny waist and a full skirt, it was also about returning Paris to the centre of fashion again by giving work to the special couture ateliers that produce special work such as embroidery, hand-made lace or ribbons. This show has some good examples of these, especially by the now extinct house of Rébé, and gives you a rare chance to see some of the embroideries close up.
Photo courtesy f the Glenbow
