Madeleine Dior
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
1879
Madeleine Dior | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Marie Madeleine Juliette Martin 1879 France |
| Died | 1931 (aged 51–52) France |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 5, including Christian and Ginette |
Marie Madeleine Juliette Martin (French pronunciation: [maʁi madlɛn ʒyljɛt maʁtɛ̃]; 1879–1931) was the wife of the industrialist Maurice Dior, known for her English-style garden at her villa Les Rhumbs in Granville, Manche, France. She was also the mother of the grand couturier Christian Dior and the French Resistance member Catherine Dior.
Madeleine Martin was the daughter of a lawyer from Angers and Juliette Surosne, originally from the department of Calvados, France. Monsieur Martin died young and Madeleine was brought up by her mother.[1]
In 1898, at the age of 19, she married Maurice Dior who was 26 years old. The couple moved to the center of Granville in the department of Manche, where Maurice Dior had grown up.[1] They had five children: Raymond in 1899, Christian in 1905, Jacqueline in 1909, Bernard in 1910, and Ginette, known as Catherine, in 1917.[2]
In 1905,[3] to satisfy Madeleine, who did not like the house in the center of town, the Dior family purchased a property that was still in Granville but on the edge of a cliff, facing the sea.[1] This windswept villa was called Les Rhumbs, named after the thirty-two divisions of the wind rose.[4] It had a large piece of adjoining land which Madeleine Dior transformed into a southern-style garden, overcoming the hostility of the winds blowing in from the sea to grow delicate plants.[1]
In 1910, taking advantage of the revenue from Maurice Dior's company which was enjoying great success, the family moved to Rue Richard Wagner in Paris, since renamed Rue Albéric Magnard.[5] Madeleine Dior excelled as the lady of the house and a woman of taste, decorating the apartment in the Louis XVI-Passy style fashionable at the time.[5] She surpassed herself when holding dinners served by butlers in white gloves, and her bouquets were much admired by her guests.[1]
In 1914, the family decided to take refuge from the war and returned to live in the Granville villa, which had been their holiday home since 1910.[5] Like all society ladies in the region, Madeleine Dior participated in the war effort. In his autobiography, Christian Dior remembers this period when women were occupied "with making shredded cloth bandages, hospitals, letters from the front and recreation sessions for the injured."[5] The family returned to live in Paris in 1918, not far from the apartment where they had lived before the war.[5]
In 1930, Bernard, the fourth youngest of the family, was affected by a serious nervous disorder. Madeleine Dior, doubtless worn down by what was happening to her son, died the following year. Jacques-Paul Bonjean, a gallery owner and friend of Christian Dior, described her as an "...elegant and slender woman, sometimes distant, always graceful."[1]