avenue montaigne

The “M” episode of A.B.C.Dior invites you to explore the House’s iconic address, 30 Montaigne, where the Dior dream was born, and couture grew up. Let sound guide you through a fascinating journey to the heart of this “refuge of the marvelous”, its heritage and reinvention(s). 

This podcast is also available as a video on YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzPXOOq1r2gEwCyehufdnuPrRk_uJIHM2 

A.B.C.Dior vous propose d’explorer – à la lettre M – le 30 Montaigne, adresse iconique de la Maison, berceau de la couture et du rêve Dior. Un voyage sonore fascinant, au cœur de ce « refuge du merveilleux », entre héritage et réinvention(s).

Ce podcast est également disponible au format vidéo sur YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzPXOOq1r2gEwCyehufdnuPrRk_uJIHM2

Welcome to the Dior Talks series themed around the sixth edition of Dior Lady Art and hosted by Paris-based journalist Katya Foreman. For this year’s event, 12 artists from around the world have participated in a game of metamorphosis by rendering the iconic Lady Dior handbag as a unique piece of art.

Bold and committed, our latest guest on the podcast, contemporary artist Manal AlDowayan, questions the representation of women, social injustices and collective memory. She describes her Lady Dior handbags - created during lockdown from her base in London - as a “love letter” to her homeland of Saudi Arabia with the artist revisiting family photographs and symbolic emblems of her childhood and life story.

Born in Dhahran, a major administrative center for the Saudi oil industry in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, the artist grew up in a compound that was built as a replica of Southern California “to make the oil drillers feel at home.” She describes it as having this “is it real or is it constructed” feel which feeds into her work. 

Adorned with a black-and-white photograph swaying with palm trees, Landscapes of the Mind, crafted from printed gold calfskin leather with embroidered black feathers, captures a snapshot of life in Saudi Arabia from a woman’s perspective, while The Boys, in printed black calfskin leather, bears an image taken by her father in 1962 and reworked by the artist. Lastly, a mini minaudiere style bag, made using a 3D printing technique, pays tribute to the desert rose, a symbol of the artist’s childhood growing up on the edge of the desert. 

Tune in to the episode to hear all about AlDowayan’s experience translating her images onto “a portable space” charged with its own story and emotions: the emblematic Lady Dior handbag. 

Ce podcast vous est proposé par Cogedim Club et Grand Mercredi.

“La minute des résidents”, nos aînés ont tellement à nous apporter !

Ce podcast vous propose de faire un pas de côté le temps d’un café avec Yvette, Armand ou encore Monique. Chaque épisode vous plongera dans le témoignage d’un ou d’une résidente qui nous emmènera au cœur de sa plus belle histoire d’amour, du Paris de son enfance ou encore de son métier extraordinaire. Vous entendrez souvent de la douceur, des souvenirs vibrants, de l’énergie à revendre mais surtout une envie profonde de transmettre !

Dans ce second épisode, nous avons rendez-vous avec Yvette, elle vit dans la résidence Cogedim Club Les Jardins d’Aragon à Villejuif. Elle a accepté de nous raconter son passé de couturière dans les prestigieux ateliers de haute couture de la maison Christian Dior. Je ne vous en dis pas plus et je vous emmène avenue Montaigne à Paris.

Bonne écoute !

In this fourth and final episode of the illuminating podcast series “Mes Chéries: The Women of Christian Dior”, recorded at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Oriole Cullen, curator of Modern Textiles and Fashion, and Justine Picardie, fashion editor and biographer, discuss the outsize role played by the Dior models and clients and by the editors who propelled the founding couturier’s name around the world. 

When Monsieur Dior showed his famous first collection in 1947, his couture house, like every other, had its own roster of exclusive models. They worked as fit models through out the year, and during the weeks of showings in the salons, and on promotional trips, they were the embodiment of Dior creativity. Selected for their singular personalities as much as their figures, their range of physiques gave clients an idealized impression of how they themselves might look in the new season’s creations. 

Those clients could well include royalty, as was the case, for example, with Princess Margaret who, along with her mother and sister, the future Queen Elizabeth II, was a passionate admirer and an early adopter of this revolutionary Paris style.

Despite previously working as a hired hand, Monsieur Dior was already on several international radars before wowing the world with his debut collection under his own name. In fact, Carmel Snow, the famous editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar at the time, and the one who coined the term “the New Look”, was just one of the media mavens who had recognized Monsieur Dior’s talents when he was part of the stable of designers working at Lucien Lelong, and Robert Piguet before that. Possessing a remarkable eye for talent, she commissioned illustrations from him and followed his career until, on the morning of February 12, 1947, she sat on a gilt chair at 30 Avenue Montaigne to watch a parade of clothes that, with one fell swoop, would change the world of fashion overnight and forever.