Readers interested in discovering the history of fashion and of specific houses and labels will find long lists of books in all sorts of libraries and stores. But there is a genre that hasn't been explored so much and that may provide us in future with wonderful books - the fashion graphic novel with a female lead. Girl in Dior (NBM Publishing; with a poetic preface by writer Anna Gavalda) by Annie Goetzinger is definitely a great example of this genre.
Books about Christian Dior, his life, muses and passions and the history of his fashion house are not rare maybe, but Girl in Dior (first published in France under the title Jeune Fille en Dior) is a delicate portrayal of the house of Dior from the point of view of a young woman, Clara.
The story starts on a precise day - February 12th, 1947 - with Clara assigned to report for the magazine Jardin de Modes about the House of Dior's first runway, the catwalk show that revolutionised fashion launching the New Look.
Clara comes from a humble background, but grew up surrounded by seamstresses like her grandmother who worked at Poiret's, and soon finds herself among powerful people such as Harper's Bazaar's Carmel Snow, incredible stars like Marlene Dietrich and Rita Hayworth, and famous artists such as Jean Cocteau and Christian Bérard.
For a bizarre twist of destiny and a photoshoot that goes wrong, Clara loses her job at the magazine, but gains Dior's friendship and a job at his house, turning into an elegant fashion model and meeting in this new role her future husband as well.
Clara is a fictional character - a sort of crossover between early models à la Bettina and elegantly fragile acresses like Audrey Hepburn - transplanted in a real fashion house and surrounded by key figures such as Dior's elegant muse Mitzah Bricard. Yet the trick of mixing fiction with reality works pretty well thanks to Goetzinger's unique style and to the fact that the author had access to the fashion house archives and to some of the spaces where the story takes place and also had the chance to talk with the seamstresses who worked as young girls at Dior's.
Annie Goetzinger - awarded the Grand Prize "BD Boum" in 2014 (she was the first woman to win this prize) - studied art and fashion illustration in the late 1960s, and worked in theatre costume design and illustration, creating press cartoons for various newspapers, including Le Monde and La Croix.
Her background - suspended between illustration and cartoons - allows her to fill the page in a lovely way. Dior's full skirts in bright and varied colours jump out of the page; a sense of movement is achieved via sensually draped fabrics and gowns, while wide brimmed hats break the monotonous rhythm of panels, borders and outlines. This is maybe what Gruau would have drawn if he had lived in our times and would have created graphic novels.
Another important point to make is that Girl in Dior is not just Clara's story, but also the tale of the atelier's staff: Goetzinger cleverly introduces in the story the models and seamstresses working, gossiping and dreaming with Dior, without forgetting to look at the downside of the fashion world, with a page dedicated to the buyers irreverently touching the dresses and buying the rights to reproduce them.
Goetzinger's poetry is not only limited to the corolla shaped skirts and the parade of models walking down the runway, but to imagined moments such as Clara dressing up in the backstage and seeing Dior's evening dresses coming down from the loggia as if they were dropping from the sky.
The English-language release of the graphic novel in the States coincided with a tour with the author that somehow re-shifted the attention on art, cartoons, freedom and the Charlie Hebdo tragedy. Goetzinger has created in the past historical and crime comic books, but also stories addressing major issues, such as AIDS, and, while Girl in Dior is not a political work, it is a hymn to beauty, and - through Clara's personal story - to optimism and endurance even when unexpected twists of destiny shatter our dreams.
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