Haute couture meets haute horlogerie with the Dior Grand Bal Plumes Precieuses Pastel.
Christian Dior’s earliest haute couture sets still yield fresh inspiration.
It might be hard to imagine in the current moment of atomized fashion tribes, but in 1947 Christian Dior created a frenzy that would upend the world’s fashion wardrobes. His New Look (the name bestowed by kingmaking Harper’s Bazaar fashion editor Carmel Snow on Dior’s debut collection) with its overtly feminine, waist-defining suits and dresses with voluminous skirts — one example required 80 yards of fabric — were a rejection of the lean, figure-concealing clothing that came before, an antidote to wartime scarcity and sobriety.
Dior was acutely aware of the trials of the conflict. He served in the French military, and his sister Catherine was a Resistance operative who would receive the Croix de Guerre. Both reveled in flowers as a refuge, and the designer named his first fragrance Miss Dior as a tribute to Catherine and their mutual love for gardens.
MISS Dior dress, Haute Couture Spring-Summer 1949 collection, Trompe-l’oeil line.
Two years after his auspicious beginning, an elaborately embellished dress enveloped in 1,000 silk roses, jasmine, and gardenias in delicate tones of blush and green, violet and ivory, also dubbed Miss Dior, was a sensation. The single, ethereal item encapsulated much of Dior’s design language — astonishing hand-worked artistry and sensuality, boundless inspiration from nature, fantasy, and extravagance.
The “Inversé 11 1/2” calibre with its oscillating weight visible on the dial has become a hallmark of Dior’s fine watchmaking. The stainless steel bezel set with 71 brilliant-cut diamonds.
That cascade of influences is undiminished in its allure. The Dior Grand Bal Plumes Précieuses Pastel applies them to the world of watchmaking, elaborating on elements inspired by the iconic Miss Dior ball gown with a couturier’s studied whimsy. It features patented Dior Inversé 11½ caliber, which reverses the typical formula for an automatic movement by placing the rotor on the dial side of the watch. Decorated with softly colored feathers and gems in the palette of spring blossoms — amethysts, sapphires, tsavorites, and diamonds — the oscillating weight becomes more than an essential mechanism; it is the centerpiece, framed by a stainless-steel bezel set with 71 brilliant-cut diamonds.
MISS Dior dress, Haute Couture Spring-Summer 1949 collection, Trompe-l’oeil line.
Lavishing attention on elegant construction is a gesture familiar to haute couture clients, whose garments are so finely finished they can be worn inside out. But despite its technical virtuosity, the Dior Grand Bal Plumes Précieuses Pastel is as lighthearted as it is rarefied. The movement of the rotor evokes the sway of a ball gown that never ends its dance, an enchantment made possible by a labor of love that began generations ago.
