The NGV’s exhibition features over 140 garments along with more than 50 accessories, sketches and photographs.

Christian Dior’s iconic New Look, unveiled in his Spring 1947 collection, is the stuff of legend, revolutionising women’s fashion as it did. Less well known is the fact that Australia hosted the first complete Dior collection to be shown outside of Paris just one year later, when 50 original Dior garments toured to Sydney. Later, Dior even named some of his designs “Melbourne” and “Sydney” and a number of his looks were called Australie.

To celebrate the 70th anniversary of the founding of the House of Dior, the National Gallery of Victoria is presenting a new exhibition featuring over 140 garments along with more than 50 accessories, sketches, photographs and other archival material. Entitled The House of Dior: Seventy Years of Haute Couture, the exhibition also offers an insight into the operation of the Dior atelier workrooms, the role that accessories and perfumes have played in expressing the complete Dior look, and Australia’s part in the early history of the fashion house.

^{Christian Dior draping fabric over fashion mannequin Sylvie c. 1948...}