Christian Dior In Soviet Russia

A local inside the Kremlin lights up as a Dior model hands her flowers.

The foreign visitors check out a dapper Soviet gentleman as they head into a church on a rainy day.

A model strolls through Moscow’s bustling GUM department store.
These pictures capture the June 1959 visit to Moscow of a group of models displaying the latest
silhouettes from legendary French fashion house Christian Dior.

The main purpose of the trip was a series of fashion shows (pictured) as the U.S.S.R. was beginning to open to the world following the death of Josef Stalin.

The shows were reportedly permitted by the Kremlin, after months of negotiations, in order to use
"foreign experience to improve Soviet production."

But the most striking pictures were made when three of the models explored Moscow as LIFE
magazine photographer Howard Sochurek recorded the adventure.

As well as taking advantage of exotic backdrops for staged photos...

...Sochurek captured candid interactions with the Soviet public.

Some locals seemed wary of the showy foreigners. This Soviet soldier and child advanced straight
through the French line.

But this able seaman happily joined the fun.

Model Kouka Denis attracts a crowd during the trip. Denis later said some people "were touching us with their fingers to see if we were real, to check that we were not dolls."

The models stroll through a marketplace after buying bunches of flowers. Nikita Khrushchev, the
Soviet premier at the time, apparently saw a place for fashion, even as he railed against "superfluity" in architecture.

The elegant visitors try to follow a discussion involving a government worker. In 1964 Khrushchev
declared that "working people want to acquire clothes and shoes that have an up-to-date style and beautiful color and that correspond to the season and to fashion. This is a good thing."

Local women check out the entourage. At the time, a quality dress in the Soviet Union cost around
two weeks' salary for the average worker.

Soviet clothing designers took a keen interest in French fashion houses, especially Dior.

Two of the models exit a convent. A leading Soviet clothing designer singled out Dior as a firm of
"the highest level" and, with an eye to Soviet ideological mores, claimed there was nothing in its collections "that would be seen as unacceptable for us."

Two local women are caught up in the spectacle as models stroll through the GUM department
store, across the square from the Kremlin.

Kouka Denis modeling a Dior evening gown. The fashion house was headed at the time by a 23-year-old Yves Saint Laurent, who would go on to found his own company.

One of the models inside a church. Soviet authorities repressed virtually all faiths, but some churches were allowed to operate. In 2009, Denis said of the Soviet adventure that "it made me very happy to be there.... To discover another world I could not have seen on my own."