Maurice Dior

Alexandre Louis Maurice Dior (7 February 1872 – 9 December 1946) was a French business magnate, and the father of fashion designer Christian Dior and French Resistance member Catherine Dior.

Early life

Maurice Dior was born in Normandy and came from a family of industrialists who were former farmers from Savigny-le-Vieux, on the border between the Calvados and Manche departments.

Together with his cousin Lucien Dior, a future member of parliament and minister, he took over the management of a chemical company specializing in fertilizer, founded in 1832 by Louis-Jean Dior. not far from Granville.

In 1898, at the age of 26, he married nineteen-year-old Madeleine Martin. They had five children: Raymond in 1899, then Christian in 1905, Jacqueline in 1909, Bernard in 1910, and Ginette, known as Catherine, in 1917. The company's success was buoyed along by innovations and the diversification of its activities: the Diors were the first people to produce sulphuric acid for phosphate fertilizer. The family also owned phosphate plants in the departments of Meuse and Ardennes. The family moved to the Parisian district of La Muette in 1910, to Rue Richard Wagner, later known as Rue Albéric Magnard, keeping Les Rhumbs as a holiday home. After the war, during which the Diors took refuge in Granville, they returned to Paris in 1918, living not far from their previous address.

He left Paris in 1932 to live in Callian in the department of Var, where life was cheaper. His daughter Catherine accompanied him, while Christian, who was not yet the renowned couturier that he would soon become, stayed in Paris and sent them money regularly. It was in Callian, in Les Naÿssès, the small Provençal farmhouse that he purchased in 1932, that Maurice Dior died on December 9, 1946, a few months before the inauguration of his son's couture house and the resounding success of his first runway show.