The Bar Suit – Everything You Need to Know about Dior’s New Look
Dior Bar suit – Everything You Need to Know about the Icon
On a freezing day in February 1947, the 12th of February to be precise, Paris was still living in the grey aftermath of the war. But there was one place which was bustling with excitement – 30 Avenue Montaigne, the atelier of Christian Dior. It was just before the beginning of the first fashion show of the designer for his own Maison. And it would become not only a huge success, it would also shape fashion in a way very few designers and collections managed to do. The New Look was created and would dominate fashion until the 1960s. Part of this collection was the iconic Bar suit, or Bar jacket.
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At the time, fashion shows were a far cry from the big events today. They served mainly one purpose and this was to present the garments to potential buyers and take orders. They were a much more intimate event, and consequently, they were really exclusive. For this 1947-show, there were not only well-to-do clients and friends of the designer in the audience, among also actress Rita Hayworth and Begum Aga Khan attended the event.[1]
What the attendees got to see was very different from the popular fashion at the time. The fashion of the 1940s had been relatively simple – there was a shortage of supply, as most materials were used for the war and, therefore, rationed. As many women worked during the war, garments had to be practical. Consequently, the silhouette was straight and looser, most women also opted for clothing without the support of petticoats. This was about to change. Christian Dior presented his Spring/Summer collection in mainly two silhouettes: the “Corolle”, which was a molded top and a swinging skirt with a tiny waistline and the “En huit” which, as the name suggests, was also very curvy imitating the number 8 and accentuated the hourglass shape of the female body.
Little did Christian Dior about the long-term impact of his designs when he created what soon would be called the “New Look”. He probably did not anticipate that he would revolutionise the industry. He simply wanted to create an antidote to the current silhouette; it was the fashion he wanted to see on women. The Corolle-line was inspired by the “flower-like”[2] woman and the “En huit” by 18th century corsets. The two silhouettes are not often explained in detail. “Corolle” is inspired by the “corolla”, the flower crown. Hence, the Corolle-line looks like an inverted carnation with its pleated skirt, opening up towards the floor. This also reflects Christian’s Dior passion for flowers which he also shared with his mother and sister Catherine. (You can learn more about Catherine and her incredibly inspiring life story in this article.) The “En huit”, the “figure eight”, as the name suggests, creates curves from the bosom to the hips. Both styles accentuate the waist. These signature silhouettes would shape the late 1940s, the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s – until another revolution happened with Mary Quant’s and André Courrèges’s mini skirt reflecting the women’s empowerment movement.[3]
At 10.30, the excitement reached its pinnacle. Bettina Ballard, a Vogue editor reported:
“The first girl came out, stepping fast, switching with a provocative swinging movement, knocking over ashtrays and bringing everyone on the edge of their seats. After a few more costumes had passed, all at the same exciting tempo, the audience knew that Dior had created a New Look. We were witness to a revolution in fashion.”[4]
The Bar suit, which was part of the Corolle line, stunned the guests – its rather simple design still reflected the times, as there was no unnecessary embellishment. But the structure of this suit was extraordinary: The jacket with five buttons was made of almost four meters of ivory-coloured shantung silk, a special type of silk originating from the Chinese region of Shandong. For the long skirt, Dior used over 13 meters of black wool crepe. The signature silhouette was achieved with a padded hipline. It is said that the young Pierre Cardin, who worked for Dior at as an assistant at the time, was sent out to buy these cotton pads. Despite its seemingly simple design, the Bar suit was actually a very costly garment, as the pleated Corolle-skirt was very voluminous – let’s not forget, fabrics were still rationed at the time. Pierre Cardin actually is said to have contributed much more to the suit design than just running out to get the padding: He led Dior’s atelier and it is said that he was the one behind the design.[5]
The name “Bar jacket” was inspired by the bar at the Plaza Athénée hotel which Christian Dior frequently visited. Dior’s Bar-style became so popular that right after its release, it was copied by many other designers and brands and soon it was available at any price level. Until today, this Bar suit is one of the most copied garments ever created. Dior himself constantly redesigned and updated his iconic design and included different interpretations in almost all of his 22 couture collections until he suddenly passed away in 1957.[6]
The collection made international headlines and was soon known as the “New Look”. But the term was not coined by Dior himself – as mentioned previously, it is unlikely that he could have foreseen the global impact of his designs. Furthermore, it is almost impossible to plan a “hype” like the one created by the New Look. The term is often attributed to the international fashion press and Carmel Snow, a former Vogue editor, in particular. At the time, she worked for Harper’s Bazaar and wrote: “This changes everything.”[7] And later she said:
“It’s quite a revolution, dear Christian. Your dresses have such a new look.”[8]
The New Look conquered the world immediately after its presentation and changed how women dressed. As beautiful and feminine as these designs were, they also stood for a certain degree of a backward movement for women: The signature silhouette could only be achieved by shapewear; the corset was back after a more forward development with looser cuts which already started at the beginning of the 20th century with Paul Poiret’s desgins and became popular between the 1920s and late 1940s. Gabrielle Chanel famously detested Dior’s New Look. According to her, it was like a prison for women. (Needless to say, she and Dior were competitors, maybe it was not only the representation of women that mattered to her.) Looking at it today, we can see it was definitely a backwards movement which reflected the overall developments in Europe and America. The image of women changed again in the 1950s – while many women used to work during the war years to support their countries and their families while the men were fighting, the ideal of the 1950s was to be the “perfect” stay-at-home mother. And to always be immaculately dressed, she opted for attire corresponding to the New Look. Can we “blame” only Christian Dior alone for this movement? Of course not. And if you know about his views on women and also his relationship to the women in his life, it is unlikely that Dior wanted to put them in a “cage”, it was probably the way he wanted to dress women without any particular pre-text.
There is yet another piece in the puzzle: Maybe we need to put ourselves into the shoes of people in post-war Europe. Maybe this silhouette was something people wanted after all the austerity measures during the war. It sounds crazy but maybe after all the rationing and saving, they wanted something “exuberant”, something big. Maybe that was the focus rather than “imprisoning” women again. And it may actually have been a fashion trend which had been in the making in the late 1930s but may have not materialized because of the war.
Horst P. Horst’s last picture in Paris before fleeing to America: the “Mainbocher Corset”
The V&A Museum has a photograph in their collection by photographer Horst P. Horst. It was the last picture he took in Paris, on the day he left France for New York, just weeks before the outbreak of the Second World War. This picture was published in Vogue France in December 1939. It shows a woman from the back in a Mainbocher corset, which was reminiscent of Édouard Manet’s Nana from 1877. It was a complete antidote to the common looser silhouette. Had there been something brewing? Maybe Dior took it up after the war? Furthermore, Dior was not the only designer who occupied himself with this silhouette, also other designers worked on it at the time. Dior’s interpretation, however, became the most famous one. And maybe that is why the collection became such a success – maybe this was the overall feeling and an upcoming trend which people were receptive for. Maybe it would not have been such a big success in a different time period? It is always about timing.[9]
Édouard Manet’s Nana from 1877 served as inspiration for Horst’s photograph.
Let’s go back to this Manet painting: Dior’s New Look played with nostalgia. As mentioned before, the war was over but daily life was still very grim – Europe was destroyed, there was limited food, many people had died or not returned from the front. People needed a distraction and often, they then resort to nostalgia. In this particular case, it was the nostalgia about the late 19th century. And this was nothing unique to Dior. A great example is from the German-speaking countries: In the 1950s, the “Sissi”-movies with Romy Schneider about the Austrian Empress Elisabeth were hugely popular. (In the long-run, they would also be broadcast abroad.) They were so successful because people could escape their daily life, to the “better times”, the monarchy. Needless to say, it was a romanticised or idealised version of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the reality for “ordinary” people was very different. But this nostalgia distracted the audience from the grim daily life. And maybe a similar nostalgia was another reason why the New Look and the Bar jacket were such a big success.
Yves Saint Laurent interpreted the Bar jacket with his Trapèze-shape.
The Bar suit did not leave the Maison, after Monsieur Dior passed. Yves Saint Laurent took over in 1958 and until he left in 1960, he reinterpreted the Bar jacket. He even created it with a new silhouette which he called “Trapèze” – he elongated the jacket and not much of the original Bar jacket’s cut was left, which already hinted at his own designs in the 1960s.
One of Bohan’s Bar suit designs from the late 1980s
He was followed by Marc Bohan who would head the Maison for almost three decades until 1989. His interpretations of the Bar designs also reflect the times and fashion movements: in the 1960s, his version of the Bar jacket was reminiscent of the popular cut – rather loose, the hips were not as accentuated as in the original from the late 1940s. Again, fashion reflected the overall fashion trend: In the 1960s, women were fighting for more rights and this was also expressed by their fashion: loose cuts and short skirts. Bohan’s silhouette was called the “Slim Look”. In the late 1980s, Bohan included a very close interpretation of the original Bar ensemble. But again, we see the signs of the times: the waistline is less accentuated, the skirt less voluminous and the hat is also much smaller.
One of Ferré’s versions of the iconic Dior design.
Gianfranco Ferré took over in 1989 and his signature was flamboyance paired with architectural shapes. One of his interpretations of the Bar suit reflects exactly that: It shows grandeur, it is voluptuous and gives a rich look. His successor John Galliano referenced Ferré’s version in 2009, the similarities are obvious.
A very “Galliano”-version of the Bar suit
This was not the only time Galliano included the iconic suit into his collections. There are many different versions, such as the Diosera suit from the Spring/Summer 1997 haute couture collection. While the skirt is very short and the hat has been substituted by a signature Galliano design, the jacket very much refers to the original from the 1940s. For Fall/Winter 2009/10, Galliano shocked the audience with a pink version of the Bar ensemble – or rather with the way he styled the jacket.
Raf Simmons’s suit reinterpretations reflected that he was an antidote to his predecessors Galliano and Ferré.
There is this saying that after one relationship, we choose the complete opposite for the next one and this also applies to the Raf Simmons era at Dior. He was the complete antidote to Galliano’s excessive designs. His interpretations of the Bar suit are much more reduced, the references to the original suit are very subtle and those who are not aware of the Dior archives may not even notice that there is a reference to the past. They also reflect the overall fashion trends of the early 2010s – this was the time when Phoebe Philo and her simple designs at Céline were a big hit and when Hedi Slimane headed Yves Saint Laurent.
One of the many times Chiuri worked with the Bar suit
Since 2015, Maria Grazia Chiuri has been the creative director and she has also worked a lot with the Bar suit. She presented a version with tulle skirts in her Spring/Summer 2017 ready-to-wear and haute couture collections and a version with a black-and-white striped long skirt for the haute couture Fall/Winter 2017, to just name a few. For the resort 2020 collection, Chiuri collaborated with Grace Wales Bonner who reinterpreted the jacket – the cut is much looser, more contemporary, and again, you have to know what she references. At the time of publishing this article, there was a “Bar suit”-section on the Dior-website. These contemporary interpretations, however, only hint at the waistline of the original jacket, they rather look like “normal” blazers with a small detail on the side.
Singer-songwriter and model Yseult at the Cannes Film Festival in 2024.
At the Film Festival in Cannes in 2024, two reinterpretations of this iconic Dior-design were spotted on the red carpet: The French singer-songwriter and model Yseult wore a version in black-and-white and model Rawdah Mohammed in red. At the time, I was not sure how I felt about these reinterpretations and I actually have to admit that I had forgotten about them. I did not find them very exciting. I only thought about them again when I did the research for this article which shows how forgettable the designs obviously were. Despite the small tweaks, I find them way too literal and this is something which I would criticise with references of the archives overall and Dior in particular.
Rawdah Mohamed in a red version of the suit in Cannes in 2024
It is the job of a creative director to know the archives, but this does not mean that these have to be referenced, or, in the worst-case, copied. Maybe we have also seen enough of the reinterpretaitons of the archives at Dior. It is an art to incorporate the right amount of archival references, if it is done too often or too obviously, it easily gets boring. Maybe that is the reason why I found the contemporary versions of the Bar suit a bit underwhelming.
Footnotes
[1] V&A Museum 2025a & 2025b, Vogue 2025a & 2025b.
[2] Vogue 2025 b.
[3] Galerie Dior 2025a & 2025b, Vogue 2025a & 2025b.
[4] Vogue 2025 b.
[5] Galerie Dior 2025a & 2025b, V&A Museum 2025a & 2025b, Vogue 2025a & 2025b.
[6] ibid.
[7] Vogue 2025b.
[8] ibid.
[9] V&A Museum 2025b.
Sources
Galerie Dior, Online Guide, last accessed on 18 March 2025.
Galerie Dior, The History of the Bar suit, last accessed on 18 March 2025.
V&A Museum, Bar, last accessed on 18 March 2025.
V&A Museum, Mainbocher Corset, last accessed on 18 March 2025.
Vogue, Dior’s Bar jacket: A Brief History, by Tiziana Cardini, published on 10 February 2020, last accessed on 18 March 2025.
Vogue, Everything You Need to Know About Christian Dior’s New Look Silhouette, by Laird Borrelli-Persson, published on 20 March 2024, last accessed on 18 March 2025.
Sources Title Image
Courtesy Christian Dior/Galerie Dior Paris, Photographs of pictures exhibited, taken by the author
Disclaimer
This article is based on the personal, views, experiences and research of the author, no fees were received by the organisations and people mentioned above. All information as of the date of publishing/updating.
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