The Man Who Brought Back the Corset
On February 12, 1947, in a grey Paris still recovering from war, Christian Dior presented his first collection. It would change everything — including what women wore under their clothes.
The New Look
Dior's silhouette was shocking in its extravagance: a full bust, cinched wasp waist, padded hips, and a sweeping calf-length skirt using up to 10 yards of fabric per garment. After six years of wartime rationing and utility clothing, it was deliberately, almost defiantly opulent.
The collection required serious undergarment engineering:
- A push-up bra to create the full bust
- A waist cincher or corselette to achieve the 18-inch waist
- Stiffened petticoats — sometimes three or four — to hold the skirt's volume
- Very high heels to complete the line
The Backlash
Not everyone was delighted. Some women wearing the full New Look skirts were heckled on the street and had their garments torn by demonstrators who felt the extravagance mocked the austerity that much of Europe still endured. In Britain, a "British Guild of Creative Designers" formed specifically to protest the return to restrictive dressing.
Coco Chanel — who had spent decades freeing women from exactly this kind of structure — was particularly furious. "Dior doesn't dress women," she reportedly said. "He upholsters them."
The Lingerie Boom
But Dior won. His silhouette became the signature of the well-dressed woman through the 1950s, and the lingerie industry boomed to support it. The structured bra, the waist cincher, the longline corselette, the padded girdle — all of these became essential garments for any woman who wanted to wear the fashionable clothes of the era.
Dior died suddenly in 1957, just ten years after his first collection. But the tension he created — between freedom and structure, between comfort and silhouette — defines lingerie design to this day.
"I wanted to make women beautiful again. I wanted to dress them like flowers." — Christian Dior