page_title: Maurice Dior
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Maurice Dior / Career
context_page_description: Alexandre Louis Maurice Dior was a French industrialist, and the father of grand couturier Christian Dior and French Resistance member Catherine Dior.
context_section_description: Working with Lucien, Maurice strove to make the family firm prosper. In 1905, its capital reached 1.5 million francs. The decision to establish the company headquarters at the Rue d'Athènes in Paris demonstrates this prosperity. The company's success was buoyed along by innovations and the diversification of its activities: the Diors were the first people to produce sulphuric acid for phosphate fertilizer. The family also owned phosphate plants in the departments of Meuse and Ardennes.
  In 1912, the family firm adopted the name of "Dior Fils & Cie" (Dior Sons & Co) and became a joint-stock company. Its capital rose to four million francs heralding a period of prosperity that was to last for around twenty years. The Diors opened factories in Brittany - in Landernau, Rennes and Saint-Marc, a town not far from Brest that was to give its name to the famous washing powder created a few years later. In 1923, Maurice and Lucien Dior's firm became a public company.
  This business success led to changes in Maurice Dior's personal life. In 1905, the family left for the center of Granville and moved into a villa - Les Rhumbs - which Maurice's wife Madeleine decorated in the fashion of the time and where she created a garden sheltered from the wind. It is now home to the Musée Christian Dior. The family moved to the Parisian district of La Muette in 1910, to Rue Richard Wagner, later known as Rue Albéric Magnard, keeping Les Rhumbs as a holiday home. After the war, during which the Diors took refuge in Granville, they returned to Paris in 1918, living not far from their previous address. This new apartment once again demonstrated Maurice Dior's success: decorated in neo-Louis XVI style, two valuable paintings were displayed, a Boucher and a Lépicié, which Maurice Dior purchased on the advice of a friend.
caption: Dior's villa Les Rhumbs in Granville (Manche), France.
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