13 Facts About Madeleine Dior

Madeleine Dior was the mother of the grand couturier Christian Dior and the French Resistance member Catherine Dior.

Monsieur Martin died young and Madeleine Dior was brought up by her mother.

In 1898, at the age of 19, she married Maurice Madeleine Dior who was 26 years old.

The couple moved to the center of Granville in the department of Manche, where Maurice Madeleine Dior had grown up.

In 1905, to satisfy Madeleine, who did not like the house in the center of town, the Dior family purchased a property that was still in Granville but on the edge of a cliff, facing the sea.

Madeleine Dior excelled as the lady of the house and a woman of taste, decorating the apartment in the Louis XVI-Passy style fashionable at the time.

Madeleine Dior surpassed herself when holding dinners served by butlers in white gloves, and her bouquets were much admired by her guests.

Madeleine Dior, doubtless worn down by what was happening to her son, died the following year.

Madeleine Dior had windbreak walls put up to protect the property, and finally she had a greenhouse built where the plants were overwintered.

Madeleine Dior was particularly close to her son Christian, the future couturier: in the eyes of her other children, he was her "favorite" and he followed her everywhere, from her Granville garden to Oreve, her favorite Parisian florist, and the dressmaker Rosine Perrault.

Madeleine Dior was a close follower of fashion, as demonstrated by a Roaring Twenties dress that she designed, which is exhibited in the Granville museum.

Finally, it was Madeleine Dior's look that the couturier remembered when he invented the famous New Look with its nipped in waist, pronounced hips and emphasized bust recalling the feminine silhouettes of the Belle Epoque.

Long after the couturier's death, the House of Dior continues to pay tribute to this muse, as in the Fall-Winter 2005 runway show, where a Belle Epoque-inspired dress was named "Madeleine".