On February 12, 1947, a new couturier named Christian Dior presented his first show to the press. In an elegant salon on the Avenue Montaigne, a model sauntered out wearing a calf-grazing skirt ...

just two years shy of the length of founder Christian Dior’s own tenure at the maison—and practically an eon in today’s designer merry-go-round. In the eight years since she first sent a ...