One woman informed Dior’s vision more than any his sister, Catherine, a Resistance fighter, concentration camp survivor, and cultivator of rose gardens who inspired Dior’s most beloved fragrance, Miss Dior. Dior’s “New Look” created a striking, romantic vision of femininity, luxury, and grace, making him―and his last name―famous overnight.

When the French designer Christian Dior presented his first collection in Paris in 1947, he changed fashion forever. Catherine’s story shines - the quiet Dior who preferred flowers to fashion, the unsung heroine who survived the abuse of the Third Reich to help liberate France.The overdue restoration of Catherine Dior's extraordinary life, from her brother's muse to Holocaust survivor the result is Netflix-worthy and the pace page-turning.

Picardie uses her investigative reporting skills.

*A beautiful, full colour package featuring over 200 archival images.* She discovers what it means to believe in beauty and hope, despite our knowledge of darkness and despair, and reveals the timeless solace of the natural world in the aftermath of devastation and destruction. Tracing the wartime paths of the Dior siblings leads Picardie deep into other hidden histories, and different forms of resistance and sisterhood. Justine Picardie’s journey takes her to wartime Paris, where Christian honed his couture skills while Catherine dedicated herself to the French Resistance and the battle against the Nazis, until she was captured by the Gestapo and deported to the German concentration camp of Ravensbrück. Miss Dior explores the relationship between the visionary designer Christian Dior and his beloved younger sister Catherine, who inspired his most famous perfume and shaped his vision of femininity. It’s about how necessity can drive people to either terrible deeds or acts of great courage, and how beauty can grow from the worst kinds of horror.’ Miss Dior is so much more than a biography.

Miss Dior is a wartime story of freedom and fascism, beauty and betrayal and ‘a gripping story’ (Antonia Fraser).

Dior new couture book