When did fashion houses begin selling designer clothes for children?

On photo:
Marc Bohan, Christian Dior’s successor, with his daughter Marie-Anne, the house’s first child model, in Paris, 1958

It seems such a modern notion that one might imagine it wasn’t until the brand-obsessed 1980s or ’90s. But Jeanne Lanvin was making childrenswear before she moved into womenswear, way back in the 1930s and this year Baby Dior marks half a century of dressing children in the very best of French fashions.

It was Christian Dior’s successor, Marc Bohan, who, in 1967, launched the first Baby Dior store, but Dior himself delighted in creating clothing for children. He began his career at the ripe old age of seven, conjuring up fantastical costumes for his friends for the fête de village that arrived in his home town every July. Later, he moved on to making dresses for his mother’s friends, but his enchantment with childhood never faded.

For Christmas 1949, he gave his three god-daughters doll versions of his New Look creations, and made one-off special- occasion outfits for the children of his clients and friends. Bohan took up the baton – his daughter Marie-Anne was the house’s first child model. Elizabeth Taylor ordered miniature versions of her own purchases for her daughter, Liza. In 1961, they were photographed together at an event in London in matching tweed dresses ‘purple with mink trim’, as the French magazine Mamans reported.

By the time Princess Grace of Monaco opened the Baby Dior store at 26-28 Avenue Montaigne, close to the couture house and the Miss Dior boutique, the royal children had been wearing mini Dior for some time. These glamorous associations catapulted the ready-to-wear line to instant success. From then on, Bohan created two collections a year of flounced dresses, flannel jumpsuits, mini ties and Russian-style pyjamas, and shoes embroidered with the initials CD to drive the point home – though he said, ‘When a designer makes something for a child, it should have fashion, but not be like a little adult.’

That’s a motto that also steers Cordélia de Castellane, creative director of Baby Dior since 2012 and the mother of four children. ‘I always try to stay in the head of the child. I don’t want kids to look perfect,’ she says. ‘I want them to have fun and be lively and full of joy and poetry.’

De Castellane previously worked for the house of Emanuel Ungaro and had her own childrenswear label and boutique, CdeC. Now she works in the Dior couture ateliers in Brittany, and oversees fittings each week in her Paris design studio. Her collections are always inspired by an aspect of Christian Dior’s life. ‘Mr Dior had a very sweet childhood and kept a big part of that inside him,’ she says. ‘So I always like to start my collections with a story for the children about something he loved.’

This has lent itself to lines inspired by Dior’s artist friends, such as Jean Cocteau; the Château de Versailles; his love of gardens, music and travel; and his bohemian-spiritual side – he made a lifelong friend of a fortune teller he met at one of the village fêtes. ‘She told him that women would make him rich,’ says de Castellane. ‘She was right.’

For this season’s golden anniversary, she named her collection Ma Petite Paris, inspired by the locations Dior loved as a child: St Germain, Parc de Bagatelle, the area around Avenue Montaigne, of course, and the Moulin Rouge. ‘As I started to create the collection in November 2015, the city was under terrorist attack,’ she recalls. ‘So I wanted to make it a homage to Paris before the war, when Mr Dior was living here with his mother. He remembered that as the sweetest time of his life. The idea [of the campaign] was kids photographed all over Paris, playing and dancing in the street with innocence and joy.’

And this they do in little Kennedy-style coats, black and red dresses in tulle and knitted fabrics, velvet tunics recreated from designs by Bohan, and slogan T-shirts. For boys, there are tailored wool jackets and three-piece suits, but also denim jeans and sneakers.

Twice a year, de Castellane designs 15 haute-couture pieces, using the house’s best fabrics and craftspeople, including the Vermont embroidery ateliers. ‘When I started, I was surprised at the idea of couture for children,’ she says. ‘I said I would do it, but with lightheartedness. So we tell fairy tales. The last one was all about candy – very romantic, with lots of colour. It’s about making something dreamlike. Not everybody can afford those dresses, but we can still take pleasure in their creation. I want people to be fascinated.’ dior.com

Source: telegraph.co.uk