Dior In Australia - The Fashions Made us Happy Again

As a new exhibition celebrates 70 years of Christian Dior, Susan Horsburgh looks back at the thrilling early days of the design house and talks to Dior model June Dally-Watkins about its special relationship with Australia and The Weekly.

- Susan Horsburgh

As Australia emerged from the dark, devastating days of World War II, women hungered for a return to normality. Better still, they wanted beauty and glamour – and they found it in fashion.

Tired of the boxy, masculine looks of the austere war years, Australian women turned to the salons of Paris for inspiration. At the same time, France was desperate for an economic recovery after four years of German occupation, keen to re-establish itself as the undisputed hub of haute couture.

Postwar Parisian designers rose to the occasion in spectacular style – none more so than Christian Dior – and so began the golden age of haute couture, characterised by wasp-waisted models in iconic, deeply feminine ensembles.

On August 27, the National Gallery of Victoria will present the never-before-seen exhibition The House of Dior: Seventy Years of Haute Couture, not only displaying the design house’s most memorable gowns, but also exploring its special affinity with Australia. Remarkably, the first complete Dior collection to be shown outside of Paris was paraded at David Jones in Sydney in 1948, and nine years later, just a month after his untimely death, the designer’s last collection was showcased in Australia in a series of parades sponsored by The Weekly featuring seven top Dior models flown in from France.

The 1957 parades marked the culmination of a decade-long relationship The Weekly had nurtured with Dior from the earliest days of the label, when Australian women reignited their love affair with French fashion. For The Weekly, fashion took a back seat during the war years, but in 1946 it appointed an elegant new Fashion Editor, Mary Hordern, a socialite, Francophile and sister-in-law of the magazine’s owner, Frank Packer. With her impeccable taste, Mary soon became a formidable authority on style, taking