A non-fiction book tells the moving story of Catherine Dior. The favorite sister of the famous fashion designer was a heroine of the Resistance and was sent to a concentration camp for it.
Christian Dior is a legend. After the dark years of war, he revolutionized fashion with his New Look, which was all about luxury, opulence and joie de vivre. The glittering world of haute couture was his home. Princesses, movie stars and industrialists’ wives all clamored for his designs. To this day, the name Dior stands for elegance and Parisian chic. In addition to evening gowns, cocktail dresses and suits, the fashion designer also created a rose-scented perfume, which he called “Miss Dior”.
What hardly anyone knows: this perfume was dedicated to his favorite sister Catherine (1917-2008), who had a fate that was as heroic as it was cruel. During the German occupation, when her brother presented his first creations, Catherine Dior joined the Resistance. She was arrested by the Gestapo and taken to the Ravensbrück concentration camp. As if by a miracle, she survived this ordeal, about which she hardly said a word later. Even her famous brother did not address the past.
So her tragic story remained largely hidden until journalist Justine Picardie came across her name. She dropped her original project of writing another biography of Christian Dior in favor of Miss Dior. The result is a meticulously researched non-fiction book written with feuilletonistic elegance, which impressively manages the actually almost impossible balancing act between haute couture and Parisian social life as well as the Gestapo and concentration camps.
The readers accompany the author up close on her extensive research trips through France and Germany to secretive country estates and elegant fashion salons, but also to oppressive memorial sites and historical archives.
A life beyond the norm
From the very beginning there was a big problem for the author: Catherine Dior, a strong-willed and courageous, but also very modest and reserved person, left little about her life. The author therefore had to deduce everything indirectly, for example through reports from contemporary witnesses who, like Catherine, were in Gestapo custody in Paris or in the Ravensbrück concentration camp.
In this way, beyond the individual biography, a dense panorama of the occupation period was created. Catherine Dior started out as a saleswoman in a fashion store. She came into contact with the resistance through her lover Hervé des Charbonneries, an early Résistance activist. He recruited Catherine to the F2 organization, which worked for British intelligence. As “Caro” agent, she was tasked with collecting and passing on information about the movements of German troops.
This undercover activity was extremely dangerous. Of the approximately 2,000 agents, 900 were eventually arrested, deported and killed. On July 6, 1944, Catherine Dior was also caught by her captors. She was taken to a Gestapo prison in Paris, where she heroically survived the torture: “I told them as many lies as I could.” A little later – the Germans were already retreating – she was taken to the Ravensbrück women’s concentration camp on one of the last French transports. Other camps followed.
Picardie describes these horrible months based on the memories of other imprisoned fellow sufferers from the Resistance. When Catherine Dior returned to Paris at the end of May 1945 and her brother was overjoyed to receive her at the train station, he hardly recognized her, she was so emaciated. And yet she proved to be a woman of amazing resilience. She was to outlive her brother, who died young, by more than half a century and was honored with numerous medals for her bravery in the resistance.
She spent her second life as a rose breeder on her country estate in southern France – more beauty, peace and harmony is not really possible. Justine Picardie’s book is not only a powerful historical document, but also a beautiful tribute to an unusual sibling love in catastrophic times. Because as different as they were in nature and lifestyle, Christian and Catherine remained the most important people to each other. (dpa)