Christian Dior

get alerts about this designer Who says recessions can't have a silver lining? When the 1929 stock market crash ran Christian Dior's art gallery out of business, the onetime political science student found a new way to earn his bread: selling sketches to Parisian couture houses and doing illustrations for the fashion pages of Le Figaro. Eventually, his talent was recognized by Marcel Boussac, a textile magnate, who financed Dior's own couture house, buying a mansion on the Avenue Montaigne and helping his protégé set up shop in 1946.

Dior's first collection, in 1947, was a shot heard round the world—without exaggeration probably the most famous single season in style history. The New Look—which harked back to the excesses of the Belle Époque and brushed away bad memories of wartime fabric rationing with a sweep of crinolines—featured wasp-waisted, full-skirted silhouettes nipped in by boned corsets and fleshed out with hip padding. While a few protesters took offense at Dior's decadent swaths upon swaths of material, it was an international sensation.

Over the next decade, Dior remained an oracle on the Right Bank, dictating nouvelle directions that trickled down to the masses, inking forward-thinking licensing deals, and appearing on the cover of Time magazine. In 1957, however, the world was shocked when he suddenly died. Proving to be as headline-making in death as in life, he had suffered a heart attack at an Italian spa at the age of 52.

Dior's 21-year-old assistant was left to "save fashion," as the newspapers shrieked. The understudy's name? Yves Saint Laurent, perhaps the only man of his day brilliant enough to fill such impressive chaussures. Saint Laurent's own first collection, the controversial Trapeze show, made waves almost as stormy as those of the New Look, but he pushed the envelope a little too far with his Beatnik collection a few years later, after which Saint Laurent left the house amid another firestorm of controversy.

Since then, a parade of boldfacers (Marc Bohan, Gianfranco Ferré, and John Galliano, whose long tenure came to a regrettable end recently following allegations against him of anti-Semitism) has helmed the label, which was acquired by Bernard Arnault for the LVMH stable in 1985. They're far from the only high-profile names associated with the brand. The years since the acquisition have been characterized by ad campaigns with A-list celebrities (such as Charlize Theron, Marion Cotillard, and Natalie Portman) and major directors (like David Lynch).