|| 3 February 2022

Inspiration for Chic

Recently I received an email from Carol with her thoughts after reading Miss Dior: A Story of Courage and Couture by Justine Picardie. Carol wrote:

Holocaust Day this week coincided with my finishing a Christmas present book. It is called Miss Dior, a story of courage and couture, by Justine Picardie.

Catherine Dior, sister of the great French couturier Christian Dior, was in the French Resistance during WW2. Betrayed, captured, tortured, and sent to various concentration camps, she arrived, in a group of 250 French women, at a forced labour camp just outside Leipzig in 1945. A young Hungarian girl was surprised to see them, but noted that they somehow managed to appear chic, even in their prison uniforms. To cover their shaved heads they unravelled part of their mattresses and, from the threads, they knitted turbans. Some would apply their precious ration of margarine to their faces rather than eat it. “it was so important to them to be pretty”. The Hungarians were amazed.

I was rather humbled after reading this and vowed not to be like the young woman in one of your lovely books, who rushed to the pet store for dog washing supplies. Looking a total mess she naturally bumped into the man she really wanted to impress. Too late.

I am now trying to be more consistent with my appearance, I have so much and Catherine and the other ladies had nothing at all.

Kind regards, Carol

Merci, Carol, for sharing the inspiration for chic you found in Miss Dior.