Above the small office where two employees juggle emails and calls while processing orders, three Stockman dress forms stand guard. All the classic features are there: a metal tripod base, a luxury brand logo and triple stitching on the front. Only their size is unusual; they’re miniature. They are a relic of the Covid era, when, for the fall-winter 2020-2021 season, Dior, unable to stage a runway show, sent out a charming trunk containing a collection of tiny, unclothed dress forms to its most loyal customers.

“We had to produce nearly 4,000 of these specimens,” recalled the workshop director, Louis-Michel Deck, on a cold December morning. They’re miniature versions of the iconic New Look model created in 1947, with its cinched waist and rounded hips, known in-house as the B406 – a shape Christian Dior himself is said to have sculpted in a moment of inspiration.

“With forceful, nervous hammer blows, he gave the mannequin the shapes of the ideal woman for the style he was about to launch,” wrote Suzanne Luling, a childhood friend of the couturier and later a key figure at the house, in Mes années Dior (“My years at Dior,” 2016).

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