I went with a friend to the V&A's Christian Dior exhibition on Thursday. I was excited to go and wasn't disappointed.
There are dresses from Dior's own work in the late forties and fifties right through to the current director, Maria Grazia Chiuri. It's beautifully presented as you might expect with the spaces themselves clearly being given a great deal of thought in lighting effects, unobtrusive atmospheric music and decoration as well as the layout and organisation of the dresses.
I took quite a few photographs but I didn't realise that photography was permitted until we were part way around so sadly I've not got any of Dior's early works shown at the start. Unfortunately this included Princes Margaret's 21st birthday dress. A large black & white photo portrait shows it was probably white or certainly a very pale colour originally but it's now a dark tea stain colour but perhaps that adds to its delicacy and the poignancy of faded beauty.
Others that stood out to me and of which I do have some photos are the room of toiles, looking just as interesting in their purity of construction as the finished embellished gowns and I loved the displays of miniature gowns. The photos aren't great as they were all behind glass but I've included a few anyway.
Well worth visiting followed by a very nice lunch in the cafe - a lovely day out that I'll remember for a long time. I might even go again before it finishes as I was aware of lagging behind my friend and could have easily spent more than the 2 hours we were in there.
I'll attach a few photographs below and if anyone would like to see more you can see them in my Flickr album
here.