Dior “New Looks” , new book

Since the Dior  Maison’s founding, its creations have been rendered sublime by the vision of the world’s greatest photographers. In “Dior: New Looks” , to be published on October 19th by Thames & Hudson, Jérôme Gautier celebrates the perspectives that have inspired one another constantly since 1947.1947: The same year the New Look was born, Christian Dior posed for Irving Penn in a sober, strikingly modern setting.
1947 was also the year the young Richard Avedon traveled to Paris for the first time and immortalized the Maison’s creations with a completely fresh gaze. Through their lenses, and those of many others, a new kind of photography met a new silhouette designed by Christian Dior.
It is this dual perspective – two “new looks” – and their posterity that author Jérôme Gautier, a journalist and specialist in fashion photography, explores in Dior: New Looks. Throughout these pages, images by the great photographers recount the history of their art as much as that of the Maison. The reader wanders through the salons at 30 Avenue Montaigne with Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton or Willy Vanderperre, then visits the couture ateliers with Patrick Demarchelier, and in so doing follows the evolution of Dior silhouettes and the art of posing, from iconic images by Irving Penn, Norman Parkinson and William Klein to contemporary images by Mario Testino, Mario Sorrenti, Inez & Vinoodh and David Sims. As each photographer captures the creations of Christian Dior and his successors (Yves Saint Laurent, Marc Bohan, Gianfranco Ferré, John Galliano and Raf Simons), we also meet the Maison’s muses, from Mitzah Bricard, shot by Cecil Beaton, to Marion Cotillard by par Jean-Baptiste Mondino or Tim Walker. Through these images, whether iconic or rare, one glimpses the special ties that unite Dior’s revolutionary silhouette with the ingenious vision of the great photographers of yesterday and today.