1955 Bohan for Jean Patou women's suit1973 Bohan for Dior suit, haute couture, Spring/Summer 1973. Adnan Ege Kutay Collection.
Roger Maurice Louis Bohan (22 August 1926 – 6 September 2023) was a French fashion designer, best known for his 30-year career at the house of Dior.[1]
Early life and career
Bohan was born in Paris and grew up in Sceaux. As a child, Marc Bohan was encouraged into fashion by his mother, who worked as a milliner.[2]
After school at the Lycée Lakanal, in 1945 he secured a job at Robert Piguet where he remained for four years.
In 1949 he accepted a job as an assistant to Edward Molyneux. He worked as a designer for Madeleine de Rauch in 1952, before briefly opening his own Paris salon and producing one collection in 1953. In 1954, Bohan was offered a job at Jean Patou, designing the haute couture collection, where he stayed until 1958. In 1991 he was appointed for two years as guest-professor for fashion design at the University of Applied Arts Vienna / Austria.
Designer at Christian Dior
From 1958 to 1960 Bohan designed for the Christian Dior, London line. In September 1960, Dior's creative director Yves Saint Laurent was called up for military service; Bohan was promoted to replace him.[3]
His deceptively simple, elegant designs drew their inspiration from the 1920s, and rejected the extremes of contemporary fashion. One notable collection in 1966 was inspired by the Russian style of Doctor Zhivago.[4]
Bohan's classic pieces are now found in museum collections around the world.[5] In 2009, the Musee Christian Dior at Granville held a major Bohan retrospective.[6]
In 1989 Bohan left Dior, before joining the house of Norman Hartnell in London,[7] where he worked for the label until 1992. Thereafter Bohan designed under his own name.
Bohan's first wife, Dominique Gaborit, whom he married in 1950, died in a car accident in June 1962. He then married Huguette Rinjonneau. They had one daughter: Marie-Anne.
^Kilborn, Peter (20 June 1976). "Swedish Monarch Marries German as 150,000 Turn Out". The New York Times. p. 3. Retrieved 26 April 2017. ...The bride was led up the aisle by the groom. She wore a long white dress designed by Marc Bohan, the head of the House of Dior, and pulled behind her, without assistance, a 12‐foot‐long train....
