LILLY OF THE VALLEY. FROM OUR COLLECTION BACK TO DIOR.
We have the habit not to sell any costume from our collection. Here is the exception that proves the rule.
After identifying one of our 1950s dress as created by Christian Dior for the film PARIS PALACE HOTEL (Director Henri Verneuil, released in 1956), we decided its true home was in a museum and no longer with us.
Long bustier dress in crème silk, embroidered with lilly of the valley motifs and strass, the dress was made to measure for the actress Françoise Arnoul. Lilly of the valley happens to be Monsieur Dior’s favourite flower. He gave its name to the Spring-Summer collection of 1954, “MUGUET”. It was just before the Autumn-Winter collection of “la Ligne H” where hips and curves were erased and straight lines were favoured in a reference to 1920s fashion.
Lilly of the valley is also the base of a perfume, Diorissimo, that Christian Dior ordered to Edmond Roudnitska, a famous maître-Parfumeur settled in Grasse. The first edition of the perfume was sold in a Baccarat crafted bottle in 1956, the same year Paris Palace Hotel was released… and one year before the french designer died from a stroke.
When handling the dress over to its new owner (at the time qualified as a fine and discrete private french collection) we firmly believed that we would ‘meet again’. It took only a couple of years before it was shown to the public as part of the major CHRISTIAN DIOR EXHIBITION at the MUSEE DES ARTS DECORATIFS in Paris (ending on the 7th of January 2018).