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Dressed: The History of Fashion
Catherine Dior, an Interview with Justine Picardie, Part II (Dressed Classic)
00:31:39
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- [00:00]
April Callahan
This podcast is supported by the RealReal. Meet Christine. She loves shopping and this is the.
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Cassidy Zachary
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April Callahan
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Cassidy Zachary
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April Callahan
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Cassidy Zachary
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April Callahan
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Cassidy Zachary
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April Callahan
Go to therealreal.com to get your extra $100 therealreal.com that's therealreal.com this is the story of the Watt As a maintenance engineer, he hears things differently. To the untrained ear, everything on his shop floor might sound fine, but he.
- [01:11]
Cassidy Zachary
Can hear gears grinding or a belt slipping.
- [01:14]
April Callahan
So he steps in to fix the problem at hand before it gets out of hand. And he knows Grainger's got the right.
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Cassidy Zachary
Product he needs to get the job done, which is music to his ears.
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April Callahan
Call clickgranger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.
- [01:31]
Cassidy Zachary
Please enjoy one of our favorite episodes from the Dressed archive of over 500 plus shows. Dressed will be back with brand new content next week. Over 7 billion people in the world. We all have one thing in common. Every day, we all get dressed.
- [02:04]
April Callahan
Welcome to Dress the History of Fashion, a podcast where we explore the who, what, when of why we wear. We are fashion historians and your hosts.
- [02:12]
Cassidy Zachary
April Callahan and Cassidy Zachary welcome dress listeners, to part two of our conversation with Justine Pikerty about her book Ms. Dior A Story of Courage and Couture, in which she explores the extraordinary life of Catherine Dior, sister of famed haute couturier Christian Dior, and, as we will learn more about today, the inspiration behind some of his most famous works.
- [02:36]
April Callahan
On Tuesday's episode, Justine gave us a glimpse into Catherine and Christian's formative years growing up together in the French countryside in Normandy, where their unbreakable bond was solidified. After a series of family tragedies as a young woman, Catherine ended up following her brother Christian to Paris, where he worked as an art gallerist before getting his first fashion design job at the house of Robert Piguet. And then after that, Lucien Lelong, where he would find himself to be working when World War II broke out in 1939.
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Cassidy Zachary
And by 1940, as many of you may know, the Nazis occupied Paris and they were attempting to infiltrate and exert control over every aspect of Parisian life and industry, and that included the fashion industry. And while this is not something we will really delve into very much today, Justine does an incredible job in the book of telling the story of the French fashion industry under German occupation. She writes about the black market. She writes about Nazi wives as customers. And then, of course, Lalong's role in preventing the Nazis from transferring the French haute couture industry to Germany. And she also talks about clothing rationing, April, which you probably know more about than I do, but I had no idea about couture clothing ration cards. There was actually 20,000 couture clothing ration cards giving out during World War II.
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April Callahan
Yeah. Meaning basically, listeners, that only a certain select amount of people were actually allowed to buy couture. You had to have the ration card and your money in order to do so. So clothing rationing is. Is during World War II is like one of my special areas of interest. So there is more work to be done on the. The couture aspect of that, for sure, Cass. But yeah, I mean, just because you had the money to buy something didn't necessarily mean that you could.
- [04:26]
Cassidy Zachary
Well, and 20,000 of those seems a lot, like, a lot to me. But I guess if you're considering, like, French and German, I guess, women that were using couture clothing ration cards, it's so fascinating and there's so much more in the book. So Justine's deep dive into the fashion industry, dress listeners, is just one more reason to get your hands on her incredible book.
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April Callahan
And as the subtitle of Justine's book tells us, this is a story of courage and couture. As promised, today we remain fully focused on the life and legacy of Catherine. It is with Catherine's work as a member of the French Resistance during the war that we pick up our conversation with Justine today.
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Cassidy Zachary
Justine, I would like if you could tell us more about Catherine's work for the Resistance. The important and incredibly dangerous role she had in getting information to the Allies is quite remarkable. It's one of my favorite parts of the book because she's so incredibly courageous. So can you tell us about what happened to Catherine in 1941 that basically shaped the entire course of her life?
- [05:27]
Justine Pikerty
The end of 1941, she and Christiane had been living together in this farmhouse in Provence, and he returns to Paris because they're completely broke. But to earn a living, he works for Lucien Lelong. They've been growing vegetables up until this point. And Catherine, who is just 24, undertakes her first act of resistance in between growing vegetables. And he goes to get a radio in Cannes. And she's going to Cannes to get a radio to listen to Charles de Gaulle's, General de Gaulle's Free French broadcasts from London on the BBC. And this in itself, just getting a radio to listen to General de Gaulle is an act of resistance. And if she'd been caught, she would have been arrested and imprisoned. But in getting the radio, she meets somebody called Herve de charbonnerie, who is 12 years older than her, exactly the same age as her brother, like Christian, studied politics at the same university in Paris, and they fall in love. And he's an early member of the French Resistance, and he recruits her to his Resistance network, which is called F2. And that F2 was originally founded by Polish intelligence officers who'd found themselves behind enemy lines after the fall of France in 1940. And they had set up an intelligence network to gather intelligence. They started recruiting French people. So the intelligence that they gathered and Catherine was, was really important to this was transmitted to the Allies in London, so to British intelligence and also the Polish intelligence in London. And Catherine acted both as a courier, so she would cycle for miles on her bicycle between different agents in the Resistance network. And then she would also gather information herself on troop movements. And then she would type up these reports on a little typewriter which she kept to the end of her life. And these reports would be transmitted on a wireless to London or sometimes smuggled out on tiny little boats from the Mediterranean coast. And she carried on. So she was running a risk in doing this sort of every minute of every hour of every day for months and then years on end. And then finally, in 1944, she received a coded message to go to Christiane, to go to her brother in Paris. And the net was closing in on this very, very active and resourceful resistance network, and some of its leaders were betrayed and captured. Catherine continued to work for this network in Paris, and she lived with Christian, and he sheltered her in his apartment. And it's important to say this, that he ran a risk by doing that. And he was expressing his tacit support for the Resistance by sheltering his sister and some other members of her network. And they would hold meetings in his apartment and Then finally, she was betrayed and arrested and tortured. And when she was tortured, she did not give away a single name. So she saved the life of her best friend, Liliane, who was in the same group resistance network as her, her brother Christian, her lover, Herve, his family, and everybody else in the network. So she remained silent despite being tortured over two days. And then she was deported. She was part of a program that was called Extermination through labor, where the prisoners were literally worked to death. And somehow, miraculously, she was able to retain her spirit of resistance. And that, I think, is what kept her alive. So I interviewed this extraordinary woman in Brooklyn who met Catherine in one of the slave labor camps towards the end of the war. And this woman, she and her sister, who were 14 and 13, were the only survivors from their very large extended Jewish family, all of whom had died at Auschwitz. But she and her sister had survived, were working as slave laborers, and met Catherine and a small group of French women who were working in a Nazi slave labor factory. And she said that Catherine had taught her and her sister to do a V sign for victory. And, you know, that was an act of resistance, and that also Catherine was sabotaging secretly the machinery in the Nazi armaments factory, again, by these tiny acts of sabotage, were acts of resistance. And she said to me that Catherine was the captain of her own soul that, you know, that is, somehow she could keep, even though her body had been punished and dehumanized, that her spirit remained her own. And she also said something so memorable, by the way, this woman who was now 90, was so beautifully dressed and manicured, and her hair was done. And this was before COVID long before COVID when I interviewed her. And when I met her, I just hugged her and said, you're so beautiful.
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Cassidy Zachary
And.
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Justine Pikerty
And she said it was really important to her, having gone through the experience of the camps, that, you know, having her nails manicured, wearing a beautifully colored dress was her own act of resistance against those memories of the Nazis. But she said that Catherine and the other French women had looked so chic to her, and I was so shocked and surprised because when they met, this was in February 1945, and so many of them had already died or were on the verge of death. But. And I think, again, this was an act of resistance. They had unraveled these sort of rags that were there, either that, you know, they were forced to wear or the rags that they slept under, and that they'd knitted these threads into turbans, which they then wrapped around their shaved Heads that looked really chic to these two little young Hungarian girls. And being chic was a way of saying to the Nazis, you cannot take away our human spirit. Yeah, I think that's how Catherine survived. Your burger is served.
- [12:42]
April Callahan
And this is our finest Pepsi Zero sugar.
- [12:45]
Justine Pikerty
Its sweet profile perfectly balances the savory.
- [12:48]
Cassidy Zachary
Notes of your burger.
- [12:49]
April Callahan
That is one perfect combination. Burgers deserve Pepsi.
- [12:56]
Cassidy Zachary
Hi listeners, it's Jack Bishop. I'm the taste test expert on America's Test Kitchen's public television show. And I want to tell you about our award winning, winning podcast. Proof. Proof combines history, science and culture to tell unexpected stories about food. We follow the US Military's decades long journey to create a pizza mre. We learn about Japan's relationship to game meat through the story of one boar hunter. And we dive literally into the history of the Chicago style Euro.
- [13:28]
April Callahan
They have a dumpster out back and it's 10 o' clock at night and.
- [13:33]
Cassidy Zachary
I'm just going to see if they.
- [13:36]
April Callahan
Have the boxes of the gyros out back here.
- [13:41]
Cassidy Zachary
If those stories intrigue you, make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes drop every Thursday. You might never look at food the same way again. It's absolutely incredible that you've given us a glimpse into how these women maintain their humanity and their dignity in these really incredible ways under the most horrific of circumstances. That is by far the hardest part of your book to read are these two or three chapters about this experience here and this just this remarkable that Catherine survived and she makes it home to her brother who never stopped fighting for her return. I mean, it's so tragic when you realize how close she was to being liberated. And they didn't know, right? They didn't know about Ravensbrook.
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Justine Pikerty
No. I mean, what was so terrible is that the people that were left behind, the families and friends whose loved ones were deported, they were punished in a different way, which was the not knowing. And Hitler called this regime Nacht und Nebel night and fog. So people just disappeared. They were put on the trains and they disappeared. Nobody knew if they were alive or dead. And Christian went through what he described as the agony of not knowing. But he also. It's at this point that I think you really see his belief in. I never liked the phrase superstition when it's applied to Dior or indeed to anybody else because it's such an integral part of his creative process. But maybe magical thinking is a better way to describe it. And he went to see a clairvoyant in Paris to ask about Catherine, because he didn't know where she was after her disappearance. And she did a tarot card reading and she said to him, catherine, your sister is alive and she will return. And I think that's why tarot becomes such an important part of his creative aesthetic. And which is continued today at Dior by Maria Grazia Chiuri. She did a tarot inspired couture collection.
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Cassidy Zachary
Oh, so amazing.
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Justine Pikerty
Yes. Such a beautiful collection.
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Cassidy Zachary
And the fashion film, I've been telling everybody about that because there's so many people have not seen that film. But I mean, magic is what brought me to fashion. And I loved that part of your book because I do believe in magic and fashion makes me believe in magic.
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Justine Pikerty
Yes, absolutely. And I think that Dior is a. Is a magical house. And that part of. I mean, people say the magic of fashion and, you know, it's become. It's sort of lost its meaning. But the magic of Dior, which is such a true strand, such an important part of Dior, has its roots in that really important experience of Christiane being given the hope through this tarot card reading, that Catherine is alive and will return. And Maria Grazia Chiuri, she was really interested by my research. And I would tell, you know, I told her when I went to Ravensbruck, I told her I went to La Col Noir and found Christiane's. I stayed at La Col Noir while I was researching and writing the book. And I found Christiane's own tarot cards in a cupboard there. And I told Maria Grazia about them. And then I said, so you must come and see La Corn Noir. She hadn't been there before. And I showed her the tarot cards and we really shared a lot of. I shared with her a lot of the things I was finding out. And so her tarot card collection was partly inspired by Christiane's own tarot cards. Her Spring Summer 2020 collection, which takes the idea of the female gardener, that's Catherine. And that was inspired by my research into Catherine's life after the war, where she went on gardening as a way of finding solace and renewal and hope. And I love the way that Maria Grazia sort of there's. Just as in every single one of Christian Dior's collections, in his 10 years before he died, the 10 years of him being the head of the house of Dior, he made something for Catherine in each collection. And so in Maria Grazia's collections, there's always a tribute, however quietly done to Catherine. So Catherine's code name in the French Resistance was Caro. So Maria Grazia did a Caro bag, and it's like a satchel you could put over your shoulder on the back if you're on a bicycle. There was a beautiful shirt in one of her collections, and she called it the Tree of Life. And I said to her afterwards, you know, I just. How much I loved it. And she said, oh, that was. That's for Catherine, you know. So she. Truly, the spirit of Catherine is still alive and well at the House of Dior today, just as Catherine as a real woman was so important to Christian's conception of femininity. And when we think of Dior dresses, I think, you know, from the New look onwards, we tend to think about the beautiful ball gowns that are the ones that are showed in museums. But in fact, some of the most beautiful pieces are inspired by Catherine. And there's a wonderful picture which I include in the book of Catherine at her godson's christening. And. And her best friend in the French Resistance, Lilliane, whose life Catherine saved by not giving her name away, she had a baby the same week as the Dior New look collection was launched. And she said, and Catherine was both, at the launch of the New look collection, sitting there in the audience, having filled Dior with flowers from the flower markets, having filled the house of Dior. But, you know, her best friend has this baby. And then there's a picture Liliane makes Catherine the godmother, and says that she's doing this because Catherine saved her life. And Catherine was unable to have children after her experiences during the war, both because of the Gestapo, but then because of what happened to her in the camps. So her godson Nicolas was more than a godson and to her. And. And I interviewed him. He's now in his 70s. When I was researching the book, and. But this beautiful picture of Catherine holding her baby godson at his christening, and she is wearing a piece from the New look collection, and there's a smile on her face as she cradles this baby boy in her arms.
- [21:09]
April Callahan
And.
- [21:09]
Justine Pikerty
And that I think what Christiane does, both in this piece that she's wearing, but in every piece that he designs for her is she's been given her sartorial dignity back. And again because of her experience in the camps, where dignity was stripped away from the women, she has in these very beautiful but dignified pieces. I mean, sometimes they're. They're pieces that are just pure freedom, like a cotton shirt dress that she's wearing as she has a glass of Wine in the garden or cotton blouse or trousers. But also when she's at this christening wearing this beautiful coat, there is a dignity to it and I think it's this tenderness that you see in what Christian makes for Catherine. Ms. Dior, the perfume is not a kind of super sensualised, sexy perfume. It's a very tender scent. It is a sort of brother's tender love for a sister. And you look at the bar jacket and you know those original new look tailored pieces, they've got padded shoulders and padded hips and a padded bust. And he describes them as architectural pieces, but I think they're also that soft padding as a way of giving a protection to Catherine who returns completely emaciated from Germany when she returns to her brother. And it's also a safe place that he has constructed for her in these beautiful, gently padded pieces that she is given a place of protection.
- [23:21]
April Callahan
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- [24:03]
Cassidy Zachary
Oh, it gives me chills just thinking about it. Honestly. You've done so many wonderful things with this book. What do you hope people ultimately take away from Christiane and Catherine's legacy? Hope.
- [24:15]
Justine Pikerty
And also, you know, we've gone through a period, the first great period of global disruption since the Second World War. And although there are people still alive who endured the terrors of the Second World War, including the wonderful woman who I interviewed, who'd known Catherine in the camps. Many of us were born after the war and yet have experienced with the pandemic, fear and disruption and uncertainty. But I would hope that people that read Ms. Dior will see that after this really long period of terror, the six years of the war of the Second World War, and you look at the lives of Christiane and Catherine, which has been shaped not only by the Second World War, but by the First World War, which took place only just a little more than 20 years before, and then the Wall street crash and the Great Depression, that even after so much upheaval and trauma and disruption Far more than the 22 months that we've just endured, which has, you know, been really challenging. That they lived through so much and yet could still, in Christiane's case, create great beauty, and in Catherine's case, could show so much resilience that she went on growing her roses and harvesting her roses in the. In the May rose harvest every single summer until her peaceful death at the age of 90 in June, after she'd brought in her final harvest of May roses. And that she continued to live life on her own terms as Catherine Dior. She never married, though she and Herve waited for her. They lived together. They shared their lives together until his death in 1989. And she lived life on her own terms. She made a good life for herself despite all her suffering and trauma. And that, to me, is truly inspiring. So I hope that people feel hope and feel inspired and feel reassured that joy and beauty and pleasure is still possible after darkness, and that an understanding of lightness and the light becomes all the more miraculous when you've looked into darkness. That's what I hope.
- [27:11]
Cassidy Zachary
I think you absolutely achieved that. Justine, thank you so much for being here. This has been an absolute pleasure. And I know dress listeners are already ordering your book as we speak, if they haven't already.
- [27:23]
Justine Pikerty
Thank you so much. It's been a joy to talk to you. It's wonderful to talk to somebody who is able to really understand the shared landscape between the history of fashion, the history of war and women's lives, and the lives of designers like Christian Dior. It's a privilege and a pleasure to talk to you.
- [27:50]
Cassidy Zachary
Yep. That's why we do what we do undressed. I mean, fashion is such an intimate part of who we all are. So this is just a beautiful testament to that. Thank you so much.
- [27:58]
Justine Pikerty
Thank you.
- [28:00]
April Callahan
Thank you so much for joining us, Justine. What a courageous woman. Cast. And one of millions of people whose lives were irrevocably altered in the wake of World War II. Catherine survived Ravensbruck, returning to her brother in a war torn France intent on rebuilding. But this was not an easy road.
- [28:19]
Cassidy Zachary
Yeah. And justice, actually, for the millions of lives lost was not something that necessarily happened, which I think is so shocking when you really learn about the aftermath of World War II in France especially. And case in point is, at the time of Dior's New look debut in 1947, the first Ravensbrook's trials had just finished. And out of the 3,500 female guards that served at Ravensbrook, that worked at the camp during the war, that did these atrocious things to women. Only 31 of them were sentenced, which is just horrifying.
- [28:53]
April Callahan
That's like 1%.
- [28:54]
Cassidy Zachary
I know. And the same went for the millions of Nazis who escaped, you know, persecution. And in the book, Justine asks, quote, how can anyone imagine an enchanting dream after a time of such madness and horror? And yet Christian Dior did, and he was inspired by his sister to find beauty after so much pain. And this is really such a beautiful story. I can't say enough about it.
- [29:17]
April Callahan
Justine's message of finding hope and beauty in the darkness is something I think that we can all relate to and be inspired by. Cass and she has really gifted us with this incredibly powerful and heartbreakingly beautiful new perspective on Dior's work. In these two episodes, we've really only briefly glimpsed the rich narrative which is at the heart of the book. And remember, it's also beautifully illustrated with the most wonderful and rare of images. You will just have to get get your hands on it yourself, dress listeners. Consider ordering it from your favorite local bookshop. Or you know, you can always request it at your local library. And also don't forget about interlibrary Alone, which is an awesome, awesome resource.
- [29:57]
Cassidy Zachary
Yes, cannot say enough good things about it. That does it for us today, dress listeners, may you consider the untold stories of remarkable people hiding in your closet. Next time you get dressed.
- [30:12]
April Callahan
Please head to RestorePodcast on Instagram or Rest podcast without the underscore on Facebook to check out the visual content associated with each week's episodes.
- [30:23]
Cassidy Zachary
And remember, we always love hearing from you, so if you'd like to write to us, you can do so@hellorusthistory.com DressedHistory.com is also our website where you can sign up for our monthly monthly newsletter, our in person tours and online fashion history courses. And you can check out whatever else we have up our finely tailored sleeves.
- [30:42]
April Callahan
We get so many questions from you all about our recommendations for fashion history books so if you are interested you can always find a link in our show Notes to our Bookshop Bookshelf. So that address is bookshop.org shop forward slash dress and there you can find over 1150 of our favorite fashion history titles.
- [31:03]
Cassidy Zachary
And do you love dressed but want to skip the ads? You can now sign up for ad free listening with any tier on our Dressed History Patreon where you can also chat with your fellow fashion history lovers and attend one of our live Q and as and so much more.
- [31:17]
April Callahan
We are also excited to now be part of the Airwave Network and their premium ad free History subscription Airwave History Platform plus available on Apple Podcasts. The subscription brings dress and also 27 other popular history podcasts ad free for just $5.99 per month. More information on Patreon and Airwave is available at the link in our bio.
- [31:41]
Cassidy Zachary
Thank you as always for tuning in and more Dressed coming your way very soon. The History of Fashion is a production of Dressed Media.
- [31:52]
April Callahan
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