Fashion Designer (1905-1957)

The most influential fashion designer of the late 1940s and 1950s, Christian Dior dominated in fashion after World War II with the hourglass silhouette of his voluptuous New Look. He also defined a new business model in the post-war fashion industry by establishing Dior as a global brand across a wide range of products.

“My mother says that when I was little my grandfather used to take me and my cousins on one side after dinner and ask us what we wanted to be when he grew up, and I’d say ‘Christian Dior’,” recalled the French fashion designer Christian Lacroix. “He was so famous in France at the time. It seemed as if he wasn’t a man, but an institution.”

When Lacroix was growing up in Arles during the 1950s, Christian Dior was indisputably the world’s most famous fashion designer. His name was known all over the world and his label accounted for half of France’s haute couture exports. The Dior client list ran from Ava Gardner and Marlene Dietrich to Princess Margaret and the Duchess of Windsor. A short, pear-shaped man, with a shiny bald pate and habitually nervous expression, he was courted by Parisian society: but so shy that he could barely bring himself to bow to his audience at the end of each couture show. Fastidious to a fault, Dior refused to receive any man who was not wearing a tie: yet was so superstitious that he consulted his clairvoyant before every major decision.

Christian Dior was born in 1905 in Granville, a lively seaside town on the Normandy coast. He was the second of the five children of Alexander Louis Maurice Dior, a wealthy fertiliser manufacturer. The family lived in a pretty grey and pink house perched high on a cliff with spectacular views over the sea. They moved to Paris in 1910 returning to Granville for holidays each summer. Dior longed to become an architect but, at his father’s insistence, he enrolled at the prestigious ‘Ecole des Sciences Politiques’ (nicknamed Sciences Po’) in Paris to take a degree in politics which, or so his parents hoped, would prepare him for a diplomatic career.

All Dior wanted was to work in the arts. In 1928, his father gave him enough money to open an art gallery on condition that the family name did not appear above the door. Galerie Jacques Bonjean soon became ‘an avant garde haunt’ with paintings by Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau and Max Jacob hanging on walls decorated by Christian Bérard. Disaster struck in 1931 when the death of Dior’s older brother was followed by that of his mother and the collapse of the family firm. The gallery closed. For the next few years Dior scraped a living by selling fashion sketches to haute couture houses. Finally he found a job as an assistant to the couturier, Robert Piquet.

When World War II war began in 1939, Dior served as an officer for the year until France’s surrender. He joined his father and a sister on a farm in Province until he was offered a job in Paris by the couturier Lucien Lelong, who was lobbying the Germans to revive the couture trade. Dior spent the rest of the War dressing the wives of officers and French collaborators. France emerged from World War II in ruins. Half a million buildings were destroyed. Clothes, coal and food were in short supply. Yet there were ample opportunities for new business ventures and fashion was no exception.

The first Christian Dior couture show was scheduled for 12 February 1947. Clothes were still scarce and women wore the sharp-shouldered suits with knee-length skirts. The Paris couture trade, which had dominated international fashion since the late 18th century, was in a precarious state. What it needed was excitement and Christian Dior delivered it in a collection of luxurious clothes with soft shoulders, wispy waists and full flowing skirts intended for what he called ‘flower women’.

Coco Chanel

Gabrielle Bonheur ‘Coco’ Chanel (August 19, 1883 – January 10, 1971) was a pioneering French couturier whose modernist philosophy, menswear-inspired fashions, and pursuit of expensive simplicity made her arguably the most important figure in the history of 20th century fashion design.

Chanel herself mentioned constantly improved versions of her childhood. However, it seems certain that she was born as the second illegitimate daughter to the travelling salesman Albert Chanel and his lover Jeanne Devolle in the small city of Saumur, France. On 16 February 1895, when Gabrielle was 11 years old, her mother died; her father abandoned them a short time later. The young Gabrielle spent 7 years in the orphanage of the Catholic monastery of Aubazine, where she learned the trade of a seamstress. After affairs with generous wealthy men – a military officer and later an English industrialist – she was able to open a shop in Paris in 1910 selling ladies' hats, and within a year moved the business to the fashionable Rue Cambon. Her influence on haute couture was such that she was the only person in the field to be named on TIME Magazine's 100 most influential people of the 20th century.

The influential Chanel suit, launched in 1923, was an elegant suit comprising a knee-length skirt and trim, boxy jacket, traditionally made of woven wool with black trim and gold buttons and worn with large costume-pearl necklaces. Coco Chanel also popularized the little black dress, whose blank-slate versatility allowed it to be worn for day and evening, depending on how it was accessorized. Although unassuming black dresses existed before Chanel, the ones she designed were considered the haute couture standard. In 1923, she told ‘Harper's Bazaar’ that ‘simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance.’

She never married. For more than 30 years, Gabrielle Chanel made the Hôtel Ritz in Paris her home, even during the Nazi occupation of Paris. The House of Chanel in Paris, under Karl Lagerfeld, remains one of the top design houses today.

Quotes

· ‘Dress shabbily and they remember the dress; dress impeccably and they remember the woman.’

· ‘Fashion passes, style remains.’

· ‘Fashion is not simply a matter of clothes. Fashion is in the air, born upon the wind. One intuits it. It is in the sky and on the road.’

· ‘There are a lot of duchesses, but only one Coco Chanel.’ On commenting as to why she did not marry the Duke of Westminster.

· ‘I am Coco Chanel.’

· ‘I love myself.’

THE 1st INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC PRACTICAL CONFERENCE
"ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE - 2000"
SEPTEMBER 11-16, 2000 KATSIVELI (CRIMEA, UKRAINE)

In 2000 the first international conference "Artificial Intelligence-2000" was held in Ukraine. The conference confirmed the working definitions of the intelligence and of the artificial intelligence. Here they are:

· Intelligence is an aggregate of universal procedures that allows building the concrete algorithms of the solution of individual creative problems at the conscious level.

· Intelligence is an algorithm of the problem solving formed by the consciousness.

· Artificial intelligence is an algorithm of the problem solving formed by the artificial consciousness.

In sunny Ukrainian Crimea the first international conference "Artificial Intelligence-2000" was organized in September, 11-16. Silence and the primeval nature made their beneficial influence upon the atmosphere of the conference, promoted the fruitful work of the scientists, their rest and creative contacts.

The first international conference "Artificial Intelligence-2000" is the international forum of the scientists who are specialized in the fields of mathematical cybernetics, theoretical informatics, computer engineering. It was directed on the exchange of the scientific experience, ideas and the methods of intelligent tasks solving

One of the most important aims of the conference was the conducting of the meeting of the scientists from the different organizations connected with the solving of the intelligent tasks of the economy, ecology, regional direction and some other tasks that needed the usage of the computer methods of the intellectualization of the information processing. The next very important task was the discussion of the fundamental principles of the scientific knowledge formation in such difficult systems like the man with his boundless opportunities of intellectual activity.

At the conference the exhibition was opened where the computer programs, intelligent games, computer intelligent systems, electronic text-books and the examples of the robots in action were represented to the participants of the conference.

The First International scientific and practical conference "Artificial Intelligence - 2000» went from September 11 till September 16, 2000 in Crimea, Ukraine. It was organized under the initiative of Donetsk State Institute of Artificial Intelligence, National Academy of Sciences (NAS) of Ukraine and Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, Informatics Department of NAS of Ukraine, Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine. The conference went in the form of plenary, sectional meetings and discussions. Simultaneously with the work of the conference there was an exhibition of achievements in the field of soft-, hardware means of intelligent computer technologies and robotic systems building.

More than 100 well–known scientists, post-graduate students, young scientists, students, introducing scientific organizations and University centres of Ukraine, Russia, Bulgaria, Georgia, who have given interesting reports and workings took part in the conference.

On the plenary and sectional meetings of the conference 52 reports were heard, the numerous problems and questions as to the state and perspectives of modern development of computer technologies of high level intellectuality were affected.

Subject matter covered by working sections:

· "Problems of artificial intelligence";

· "Computerization of natural languages";

· "Intelligent programs. Hardware, software means of support of artificial intelligence systems".

While discussing "Problem of artificial intelligence and artificial consciousness " the conceptual problems of artificial intelligence forming were discussed, the wide discussion of such definitions as "intellect", "artificial intelligence", "consciousness", "artificial consciousness" was highlighted.

The conference has passed at high activity and the large interest of the participants.

It was stated the following:

1. The investigations and elaboration in the field of artificial intelligence, intelligent systems and computer technologies are actual and define, to a great extent, the main direction of modern world scientific progress.

2. One should pay attention to building of a new conceptual base of intelligent means, new generations of informational systems and robotics having engineering audition, vision, the possibilities of image recognition, and wide physical possibilities of movements.

3. It is necessary to perfect the terminological and conceptual device of scientific investigations, connected with building of artificial intelligence;

4. Modern mathematical basis of investigations and the available theoretical workings allow creating in the near future the modern means of high-parallel computing structures that are better than the foreign analogies according to their parameters.

5. The special attention should be paid to more intensive development of investigations and elaboration in the field of computer linguistics and computer technologies, connected with natural language dialogue of the man and machine within the framework of the International project "Computerization of natural languages".

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