The principal line in Christian Dior’s first haute couture collection, presented in 1947, was called Corolle.
Dior named the line after the botanical term for the petals of a flower. Its rounded, feminine shape used a fitted upper body, a tightly defined waist and a wide skirt. The collection was presented at Dior’s newly established couture house in Paris on 12 February 1947, alongside another line known as Envol.
The public and press soon focused on the collection’s dramatic departure from wartime clothing. Carmel Snow of Harper’s Bazaar famously called the effect “The New Look,” a phrase that became more widely remembered than Corolle itself. This sometimes causes the two terms to be treated as synonyms, but they are not identical: Corolle was Dior’s internal line name, while New Look became the popular description of the silhouette.
The collection established Dior as a major postwar couturier and made his architectural approach to clothing internationally influential.