The Toile de Jouy has conquered the Dior house with its ability to tell a thousand and one aesthetic stories ⊠From the salons at 30 Avenue Montaigne to the recent capsule collections – the Toile de Jouy adorns creations by Dior with bucolic elegance.
Toile de Jouy Dior: The Story
Like emblematic works such as the Trianon gray or the Toile Oblique, we owe it to Christian Dior himself for having introduced the Toile de Jouy into the vocabulary of the house.
And at a time when this pastoral pattern is making a very remarkable comeback in the Dior Chez Moi and Dioriviera capsule collections, the story of the toile de Jouy in the work of the founder is intriguing.
It must be said that print made its entry into Dior couture at the same time as the empire was born, which would soon change the aesthetics of post-war women.
Because here again, it is in Christian Dior’s ambition to restore to women the splendor and grace lost during the dirty war, that we must seek the origin of this very dreamlike motive!
The Toile de Jouy Dior: Romanticism Reborn
Dior’s New Look – to use Carmel Snow’s words – literally revolutionized fashion overnight. By February 1947, that was the end of soldier women – the flower woman could bloom!
In this sense, Christian Dior has designed the ideal setting for his clients. At 30 Avenue Montaigne, the historic headquarters of the house first served as a boutique-workshop ⊠A real bee hive, as he called it himself – he wanted a fashion house where everything breathes cam, beauty and pleasure!
How then to transcribe the soul of Dior couture? The designer-founder calls on two of his friends to take care of it. The decorator Victor Grandpierre and Christian BĂ©rard, known as âbabyâ, will in quick succession introduce Dior to some of these future most emblematic codes.
We owe them for giving it the Trianon gray, the Napoleon III style chairs with the seat that gave birth to cane ⊠And the toile de Jouy!
At Dior, in the heart of the historic boutique, the Jouy canvas can be found stretched over all the furniture. Better still, the pastoral motif used by Victor Grandpierre and Christian BĂ©rard is none other than a work by Jean-HonorĂ© Fragonard âŠ
This Jouy Dior canvas anchors the Dior aesthetic in phase with the Grand SiĂšcle spirit!
âOur dearâ Baby â, with infallible taste, came to breathe the air of the collection⊠It was he who advised us to tend the Jouy canvas shop⊠Under an apparent disorder, he had created lifeâ later recounted Christian Dior in his memoirs, Dior & Moi.
The Canvas In The Present
A key motif in the oh so chic and twirling grammar of Dior, the toile de Jouy has never ceased to inspire the successors of the great couturier. From John Galliano and his baroque interpretation, to Kim Jones and the present Maria Grazia Chiuri – the toile de Jouy never ceases to recall the timelessness of its refinement.
Versatile and truly iconic, it embraces fashions, lines and eras without ever losing its dreamlike power! And it’s still Maria Grazia Chuiri who talks about it the best âŠ
“The idea for the toile de Jouy came to me at the studio one day when we were all chatting together. The French on the squad weren’t sure what to think. But I, being Italian, saw this painting as something exotic. The main reservation was that we were touching on something so coded, so bourgeois, that it was going to prevent modernity. “
In the Dioriviera capsule collections, on beautiful Limoges porcelain tableware from Dior Maison, or more recently in the Dior Chez Moi collection ⊠The toile de Jouy has not finished celebrating the aesthetic strength of a fantasized bucolic universe!
