The Dior Half Moon Bag: Black and Brown Leather in the 1970s

A half moon is one of the simplest shapes a bag can take: a straight top edge and a curved base, like a semicircle cut from a sheet of leather. It needs no ornament to be recognisable. This Christian Dior handbag from the 1970s uses that shape in two colours of shiny leather, black and brown, with a small handle at the top.

Dior after Dior

Christian Dior died in 1957, ten years after the first collection that made his name. The house passed first to Yves Saint Laurent and then, from 1961, to Marc Bohan, who led it until 1989. La Galerie Dior's chronology of the house records Bohan's long tenure, the longest of any of its designers.

Those decades were also a period of expansion. An obituary of Bohan reproduced by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, notes how far the house had moved beyond couture and perfume, with licensed lines of accessories and other goods that came to provide a large share of its income. Handbags were part of that wider production, carrying the Dior name to clients who might never enter the couture salons on avenue Montaigne.

Colour block

The bag combines black and brown leather in clearly separated areas. The arrangement suits the half moon shape well: the division between the colours follows and emphasises the bag's outline. The shiny finish of the leather gives the surface a crisp, polished look.

The small top handle makes it a bag to be carried by hand or on the forearm rather than on the shoulder, in the manner of a day bag of the period. Inside, a single pocket keeps the essentials in order.

The object

The Archivary describes the bag as a Christian Dior half moon handbag in shiny black and brown leather, with a small top handle and an inside pocket. It measures 30 by 15 by 5 centimetres. Its condition is recorded as very good, with slight signs of wear due to age.

At five centimetres deep, the bag is slim, designed to hold a few flat things rather than a day's luggage. That slimness is part of its elegance, and part of what makes it a good example of a 1970s bag made for town use.

Reading a quiet bag

Bags like this one rarely appear in histories of fashion, which tend to concentrate on runway pieces and named models. Yet they are the objects through which most people encountered a house like Dior. Their materials and finishing, rather than any famous design, are what carry the name.