Gruau
Haute Couture Fall-Winter 1949, Milieu du siècle line
This ivory silk satin evening gown, without motifs or other colors, simple and delicate, was named after the illustrator René Gruau, friend and collaborator of Christian Dior.
René Gruau, who started his career as a fashion designer, perfectly captured the creations of Christian Dior to reproduce and distribute them to the influential press. About him, Christian Dior wrote in Je suis couturier (Talking About Fashion): “I sometimes found something new about my own dresses after they were drawn by Gruau or Erickson. They had highlighted a detail that had not been so important to me.”
Florence dress, Haute Couture Fall-Winter 1947 collection, Corolle line
Pernelle coat, Haute Couture Fall-Winter 1950 collection, Oblique line
The draped, obliquely buttoned bustier of the Gruau dress hung over an asymmetric long skirt revealing, on one side, a cascade of folds reaching the ground. This design, with its rounded curves, expressed the poetry of René Gruau’s drawings, in which the clean lines often suggested more than what was represented, in a palette restricted to only a few solid colors.
The Gruau dress was also illustrated by René Gruau himself for the Femina magazine, October 1949.
In 1947, René Gruau turned to advertising and worked with a number of Parisian luxury brands, including Christian Dior. He was behind one of the first advertising designs for the Miss Dior perfume, the first to be introduced by Christian Dior in 1947 and named in tribute to his sister Catherine.
© Laziz Hamani ; © Association Willy Maywald/ADAGP, Paris 2022 ; © Société René Gruau, www.renegruau.com
