Dior's "Vilmiron" dress refers to what?

amandainvermont

amandainvermont

VFG Member
I am about to post this amazing dress to the VFG Instagram page and I wanted to do more research about it. It is a 1952 dress named "Vilmiron" by Dior. This spelling is repeated all over the internet (therefore it is correct, right :) ? )

I wondered if it was a vocabulary word I didn't know, or a place in France? There is a long-time seed company in France called Vilmorin. Louise de Vilmorin was an heir to that seed company and she had quite a biography - she was an author engaged to novelist and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry; at one point. She married Jessie Hunt, who owned most of Las Vegas. She next married Paul Pálffy ab Erdöd (a Hungarian playboy.) It was his fifth marriage. She was then a mistress for a number of men and spent the last years of her life as the companion of the French Cultural Affairs Minister and author André Malraux.

So I'm assuming it's a typo? Amazing what you can find online....

There is a piece, "Dior Before Dior" that Google says mentions Louise de Vilmorin, but I can't access it.


close.jpg


Someone else take the next step?
 
I'm inclined to agree with you about the typo theory, Amanda. I just found this April 2020 article from Vogue UK about Dior's life long love of gardens. Among other tidbits:
"Christian Dior spent most of his childhood in Villa Les Rhumbs, a seaside house near Granville in Normandy, whose gardens were transformed into the lushest of Edens by Christian’s mother, Madeleine. He was an avid attendant to his mother’s horticultural pursuits and is said to have raced to meet the postman delivering seed catalogues from the seed company Vilmorin-Andrieux, just so he could pore over their tempting pages."
 
"Even the Met's homepage calls it that, so it must be right."


This is so interesting, and the dress is stunning and so incredibly detailed. The MET has been wrong before, there are a number of errors on their site, and they really did not do the research on this one but just lifted it from somewhere else. It has to be Vilmorin, there seems to be no doubt to my mind.
 
Omg, I love watching these threads develop. It's like a mystery unfolding. Great story! How exciting! and what a beautiful dress!
 
I also found this which definitely establishes the reason for the naming to relate to the botanical connection that Maggie also found.

“For Spring-Summer 1952, featuring designs with names such as called 'Coquelicot', 'Bleuet', 'Dahlia', 'Jonquille' and 'Bourgeon', the 'Vilmorin' dress – paying tribute to this botanical fascination – comes to life in a white chiffon in full bloom.”
 
Wow, you nailed it, Victoria! Hadn't thought about the MAD, I only checked the Galliera :BAGUSE:, which turned up nothing, and all other hits I kept getting were from the Met or obviously copied/reposted from there... I would have thought they would get things right, but obviously not, and everybody thinks the same, so here we go... :duh2:.
 
I thought this dress looked familiar - I saw it in person at the Met's Manus x Machina exhibit in May 2016.

It was my first visit to NYC. DH grew up there and, given that we had embarked on a serious longterm relationship, I needed to meet his adult son and granddaughters. He was very pleased to take me for my first Met experience , but he was bored and ready to be done long before I was!
IMG_1394.JPG

I see from the Met website that there is a matching cap. Download is disabled, so I can't post it here.
 
I did see the matching cap on Pinterest, downloaded from the museum's site I assume.
Click to expand...
No download mechanism that I could find. Most likely a cropped screenshot.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top