Sixty years ago Christian Dior unveiled his first collection to an electrified audience. It was dubbed The New Look and it launched a golden age of design.
By Barry Didcock

PARIS was cold on the morning of February 12, 1947. The temperature had dropped to -6˚C overnight and, though France's journalists were on strike, the shivering capital woke to the news that the government had reduced the daily bread ration from 350g to 200g. Earlier generations had revolted over less but no heads rolled this day. Eyes did, however - in particular those set into the exquisitely composed faces of Carmel Snow, editor of Harper's Bazaar, and Bettina Ballard, of American Vogue.

They and their colleagues from the international fashion press were in Paris to report on the new haute couture collections, that handful of dresses and ballgowns created seasonally by the city's top designers and whose provenance - hand-made and exquisitely tailored one-offs - meant only the world's richest women could afford them.

Snow and Ballard had already spent a fortnight in the arcane world of the Paris shows and they were aware of the buzz surrounding the newly launched fashion house of Christian Dior. So as they took their seats in the grande salon of 30 Avenue Montaigne, the unprepossessing building which doubled as his atelier and exhibition space, they knew they were in for a treat. "I was conscious of an electric tension I had never before felt in couture," Ballard later wrote.

The excitement was justified. The collection Dior unveiled that February day caused a revolution in fashion design whose influence would be felt well into the 1960s. Out went the functional austerity of the war years, in came the luxury and elegance that had always fuelled couture but which was allied now to a thrilling modernity.

Breasts were back and so were curves (at least on the clothes: the models remained cool and willowy). Waists were high and cinched, skirts didn't hang - instead they billowed and flared, and the gowns came in taffeta, silk, even panther-print muslin. Dior, in 1947, defined 1950s fashions before the decade had even arrived.

He called his collection Corolle, referring to the whorls of a petal. Carmel Snow dubbed it The New Look, meaning it was a bit like the old look but better and newer. The name stuck.

Writing about that seminal moment in his autobiography, Dior recalled that in 1947 "women still looked and dressed like Amazons. I designed clothes for flower-like women, with rounded shoulders, full feminine busts and hand-span waists above enormous spreading skirts."

The New Look wasn't just about the shape of the clothes. To create a typical evening gown, Dior used a staggering 25 yards of material, considered scandalous in those days of rationing. He even made the models move differently, encouraging them to see themselves as dancers rather than mannequins.

Ernestine Carter of The Sunday Times witnessed this display, describing the models as "arrogantly swinging their vast skirts, the soft shoulders, the tight bodices, the wasp waists contemptuously bowling over the ashtray stands like ninepins".

In the months that followed the Dior show, those who could afford to invest in the New Look rushed to Avenue Montaigne. Olivia de Havilland snapped up a Passe-Partout suit, Rita Hayworth ordered the Soirée evening gown in navy blue tafetta, Vivien Leigh dropped in and Nancy Mitford flogged her fur to fund the purchase of a coat.

Many others ordered the signature piece of the Corolle collection, the Bar suit. It comprised a tight, low-cut jacket of shantung silk which flared at the waist and was worn over a black wool skirt with deep pleats. Price tag? A cool 59,000 francs.

Today they are collectors' items, like many other early Dior creations. It's appropriate, then, that 60 years on from the launch of the New Look both it and the revolution it represented are to be celebrated at London's Victoria and Albert Museum.

The Golden Age Of Couture: Paris And London 1947-1957 opens this weekend. It charts the birth of the Dior house and the rebirth of the couture tradition on both sides of the English channel, and culminates with Dior's death in 1957.

As well as his collections, it highlights the work of designers Cristobal Balenciaga, Pierre Balmain, Hubert de Givenchy, Hardy Amies, Elsa Schiaparelli, Norman Hartnell and Charles Creed. More than 100 vintage dresses will be on display, many from the V&A's own collection, alongside archive materials and images from the photographers who helped bring the New Look's aesthetic to the mass media. Prime among these are Richard Avedon, Irving Penn and Cecil Beaton, who was instrumental in helping the museum acquire the clothes in the 1970s. "Dear Cecil," writes Lady Alexandra Howard-Johnston in 1974, "I kept these dresses because they were too beautiful and too good to give to a jumble sale."

Of course Dior's influence on the history of design is only one side of the story. It's true that the very essence of couture was its elitism but that didn't stop it becoming a massive industry in its own right. Each couture house relied on large numbers of highly skilled craftspeople, each dedicated to a separate part of the production process. Some just did brocade, others silk roses or buttons or corsetry. But together it meant Dior, Chanel, Givenchy and their colleagues were important employers for the artisan class.

The government was well aware of this and offered subsidies to those couturiers who used textiles from French manufacturers. In return these firms make short runs of high-end fabrics intended solely for use in the fashion houses of Paris. Indeed, figures from 1947 show that couture was France's second-biggest export industry.

Dior alone employed 85 people in 1946 and by the mid-1950s had a workforce of around 1200. His annual turnover was $18 million and his seamstresses were producing 12,000 dresses a year. He was canny enough to diversify fast, too, branching out into accessories, hosiery, gloves, men's ties, cashmere jumpers, even swimwear for the American market. As well as the Paris centre he opened outlets in London and, oddly, Caracas.

In 1950, the man who had been Dior's chief tailor since 1947 left to start up his own fashion house. His name was Pierre Cardin. Three years later a 17-year-old Frenchman from Algeria joined the house. His name was Yves Saint Laurent and it was he who would take over when Dior died in 1957. Saint Laurent would also go on to found his own fashion empire and use his own YSL initials for the logo.

For the past 10 years, Dior's creative head has been John Galliano and some pieces from his Autumn/Winter 2005/06 collection feature in the Golden Age Of Couture exhibition. And to mark the 60th anniversary of the New Look itself, his latest collection returns to the theme of the 1940s. The gowns, such as a purple organza layered bustier dress, are big and flouncy and easily pass Dior's 25 yards of material rule. Carmel Snow's eyes would roll with pleasure, I'm sure.

Today, Dior is a house in name only. In every other sense it is a global brand, as are many of the other companies which started out as select couturiers and suppliers to the rich and famous and which today make up a luxury goods industry worth $157 billion annually.

They may have survived Brigitte Bardot's assertion that "couture is for the grannies". They may have survived the fictional obituaries of Balenciaga and Givenchy published by Queen magazine in 1964 to announce "the death of couture". They may even have survived that decade and the next by diversifying, riding the democratising trend for off-the-peg wear while maintaining their reputation for upmarket luxury. But to what extent is that reputation now a chimera? How real is the luxury if it is manufactured in China by workers earning a dollar an hour? If it is accessible on any high street, shopping mall or airport boutique?

In a new book called Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Lustre, fashion writer Dana Thomas puts her Prada boot into these and many other brands for the way they have maximised profit and ubiquity at the expense of their own credibility. The luxury industry "has sacrificed its integrity, undermined its products, tarnished its history, and hoodwinked its consumers", she writes.

In other words, it has jettisoned everything that ever made it special - things like silk jackets with flared waists, evening gowns in navy blue taffeta, sequins, brocade and panther-print muslin. Perhaps, then, if luxury really is extinct, a museum is the best place for it.

The Golden Age Of Couture: Paris And London 1947-1957 is at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London until January 20, 2008