This evening dress was designed for the Spring 1959 collection of Christian Dior London Ltd, first shown in London on 4th March 1959.

Christian Dior founded his Parisian fashion house in 1946 and showed his first collection on 12th February 1947. Following the success of his haute couture house in Paris, in 1952 Christian Dior set up a London-based company, C. D. Models (London) Ltd., to sell high-end ready-to-wear versions of his designs to the British public and commonwealth markets. In December 1954, the company changed its name to Christian Dior London Ltd.

Before joining Dior in 1958, Marc Bohan worked at several Parisian couture houses including Piguet, Molyneux and Patou. His initial role at Dior was to design the London collections which were shown a month after the main Paris line. In 1961 Bohan was appointed creative director in Paris, taking over from Yves Saint Laurent. Marc Bohan was the House of Dior’s longest-serving creative director, designing the main couture collections from 1961 to 1989.

Founded in 1837, the Canadian department store of Holt Renfrew & Co. Ltd had premises in Quebec, Montreal and Toronto during the 1950s. The company signed a deal with the House of Dior in 1951 ensuring that it had an exclusive lisence to sell Dior throughout Canada. Holt Renfrew & Co. Ltd ordered Dior designs from the Paris, New York and London collections, as well as reproducing certain models in-house and offering a made-to-measure service. The two labels in this particular dress demonstrate that it was made at the London workrooms (originally in Maddox Street, Central London) and exported to Canada to be sold at a Holt, Renfrew & Co. store.