Miss Dior … It’s a title wrapped in the scent of rose petals and nostalgia for those of us whose first real perfume was Miss Dior. All those floral smells, the millefiori of sweet and dusky, the bottle with its white satin couture bow.
What a surprise, then, to learn that Miss Dior was named after Christian Dior’s sister Catherine, who was anything but a delicate flower. As Justine Picardie writes in Miss Dior: A Story of Courage and Couture, Catherine was Christian’s favorite sister, the courage to his couture. Where Catherine was a dedicated member of the F2, a stealth arm of the French Resistance, when Hitler came to power, Christian was assiduously working to become known, first as a fashion illustrator, then as a designer under the tutelage of Lucien Lelong, where he quickly distinguished himself.
