Sister, WWII Spy, Muse: Who Was the Real 'Miss Dior'?

In July 1944, in the final year of World War II, Catherine Dior—sister of future fashion designer Christian Dior—was arrested in Paris for her role in the French Resistance, a clandestine movement fighting the Nazi occupation. Seized by the Gestapo, Germany’s secret state police, she was deported into the network of Nazi concentration camps, where she survived under brutal conditions

Her courage and resilience would inspire her brother to create designs and fragrances that paid tribute to her extraordinary life.

Catherine Dior's work in the French Resistance and time in the concentration camps were a far cry from her early life in Granville, Normandy. She was the fifth and youngest child of the elite Dior family, headed by patriarch Maurice Dior, a successful industrial fertilizer magnate.

Their family home sat atop a hill overlooking the English Channel where Catherine’s mother Madeleine established a picturesque flower garden. Her brother Christian, 12 years Catherine’s senior, relished working in the garden, and both siblings inherited their mother's love of flowers.

But the Diors' idyllic life changed in a flash when in 1931, Madeleine died suddenly. Catherine was only 13. When Maurice lost everything during the global depression of the 1930s, the family was forced to relocate to the agricultural center of Provence.

“Almost the entire family knew what it was like to be rich except Catherine,” says art and fashion historian Robert Ossant, co-author of The Art of Couture Embroidery: The Secrets of Runway Design. “I think the family saw themselves as elite. She did not see herself as that at all. She was working class. She was the rebel child. And that was not just because of her nature. It was also because of her circumstance.”

When German forces rolled into France in 1940 and promptly defeated the French army, many citizens were humiliated and angry. The Nazis established strict rules around surveillance, censorship and curfews. French citizens were afraid of arrest, deportation and even execution.

Catherine moved to Paris alongside Christian, who had begun working under one of the city’s leading avant-garde designers. But a year before the Nazis occupied France, Christian was drafted into the French army. His short service lasted from 1939 to 1940—just until the Franco-German Armistice was signed. Under it, France was divided into two zones: one under German military occupation and the other a puppet French zone led by collaborationist Marshal Philippe Pétain, known as the Vichy regime.

Catherine was 23 when the Nazis took control of France. She vehemently opposed her German occupiers and the appeasing Vichy regime. In protest, she wanted to listen to the BBC radio broadcasts of exiled leader General Charles de Gaulle, who’d called on the French to fight against the Nazi occupation. But she needed a radio.

During a search for one in Cannes, Catherine met George Papillault, Baron des Charbonneries, known to friends as “Hervé.” He was a member of F2, a French Resistance network connected to British and Polish intelligence efforts. Records show Catherine joined F2 as a courier and intelligence-gatherer. She and Hervé often held F2 meetings at Christian’s apartment in Paris.

Even though many Nazis considered women like Catherine harmless, they were important contributors to resistance efforts.

“Her role in the resistance was probably one of the more dangerous ones because she was couriering messages back and forth on her bike,” Ossant says. “She was very much putting her life at risk.”

According to biographer Justine Picardie, author of Miss Dior: A Story of Courage and Couture, Catherine collected intelligence on German troop movements along the Mediterranean coast and in Southern France.

After the United States joined World War II in 1941 and the Germans took full control of France in November 1942, Catherine and other F2 members provided details about troop movements. This information was vital for Allied forces preparing to invade Provence as part of the Normandy landings.

At the same time, German and Vichy security forces were infiltrating the French Resistance networks.

In April 1944, Friedrich Berger, a French Foreign Legion veteran from Germany, set up what became known as the Gestapo of Rue de la Pompe. Berger and his crew were devoted to destroying the French Resistance. Between July and August, they made mass arrests of members of the F2 network.

It was early July when Catherine was sent to meet another female member of F2. When she arrived at her meeting point, two of Berger’s French gestapistes took her into custody.

“The occupation of France was coming to an end, and she was snatched, captured and tortured,” Ossant says. “They wanted names of the other resistance fighters. But they also wanted to know where she’d been meeting with them.”

Despite days of brutal torture, she stayed silent. She never gave up Hervé, his family, other members of the resistance network or her brother Christian.

By late July 1944, the Nazi occupation was collapsing. Berger and his men put Catherine on the last train out of Paris before the city was liberated on August 25. She and 400 other women were sent to Ravensbrück, the Nazi concentration camp for women in northern Germany.

Catherine was then sent to Torgau, Germany and on to Abteroda, a subcamp of Buchenwald for women who were forced to make blasting agents for BMW. Christian tried everything in his power to get her released, especially during her time being moved between camps.

As Allied bombing of Germany intensified, the women were once again moved to another camp. In April 1945, the Nazis then pushed thousands of those prisoners into grueling "death marches" toward the last fragments of their territory. Several weeks later, emaciated, sick and unrecognizable, Catherine was finally rescued and reunited with her family.

After the war, Catherine maintained her privacy and avoided talking about her wartime horrors. “She had quite a shadowy existence while she was a member of the resistance,” Ossant says. “I think that always stayed with her. She was just very much private and secretive in a way.”

She was honored with the Croix de Guerre (Cross of War) and the Croix du Combattant Volontaire de la Résistance (Cross of the Resistance Volunteer Combatant) from France; the Cross of Valour from Poland; and the King’s Medal for Courage in the Cause of Freedom from Britain.

Catherine returned to Provence with Hervé, who became her partner. She devoted the rest of her life to her love of flowers. “[Catherine] wasn't a fashionista,” says Einav Rabinovitch-Fox, a visiting historian at Case Western Reserve University, but “the flower business certainly connected her somewhat to the fashion industry.”

Christian also got a new lease on life and established his namesake fashion house. He unveiled his first collection in February 1947, which was famously dubbed “The New Look” by fashion magazine Harper’s Bazaar. Part of the collection was his first perfume, Miss Dior, a tribute to Catherine and their love of flowers.

“[Christian] really set the standard of this idea of femininity again,” Rabinovitch-Fox explains. “There was a more conservative turn after the war and this idea that you need to surround yourself in beauty.” But Rabinovitch-Fox believes Christian had to make the collection a tribute to his sister.

“In the atmosphere after the war, he had to do it because he was blamed for working with [designer] Lucien Lelong, who many considered to have collaborated with the Nazis,” Rabinovitch-Fox says. “But the truth is Lelong convinced the Nazis not to take over Paris’ couture industry and allowed designers to keep working."

Christian later helped Catherine buy property where she grew roses, jasmine, lily-of-the-valley and lavender. She became one of the first women in France allowed to sell cut flowers in bulk.

“Flowers are a constant revolving theme with the Dior family,” Ossant says. “I think what Christian Dior intended when he honored her with the Miss Dior perfume was to heal himself, heal France and to heal his sister.”

Catherine worked tirelessly to support her brother’s legacy after he died unexpectedly at 52 in 1957. She opened the Musée Christian Dior in Granville in his memory, where she was honorary president until she died at age 90 in 2008.