Dior: beyond fashion

If Dior's Spring-Summer 2021 fashion show has made such an impression, it’s because of its extraordinary alchemy between fashion, the avant-garde and reflection on the place and image of women in our society. We look back at an event that has transcended the framework of a ready-to-wear collection to become a global artistic manifesto.

PARIS - Rarely has the traditional tent set up in the Jardin des Tuileries to host the Paris Fashion Week shows ever hosted such creative splendour. For Maria Grazia Chiuri, Dior’s Artistic Director, each collection consists not only of conceiving a series of pieces designed to accommodate the body of the woman who wears them, but it also entails a reflection on societal transformations, or a reaction to current events. For the Spring-Summer 2021 collection, Chiuri paradoxically transforms the Dior silhouette to respect its heritage: the subversive radicality of its origins.

For example, the structure of the Bar jacket transforms in a reinterpretation of selected autumn-winter 1957 Dior silhouettes created for Japan. The addition of laces allows it to be adapted as the wearer wishes. The suit dresses each woman in a unique manner. Chiuri draws inspiration from those women who, through their writings, illuminate life and emotion: poets, intellectuals, authors. Members of an idealised academy. In the intimacy of their homes, their places of work, wrapped in infinite layers of colour, like Virginia Woolf, or dressed in a simple white shirt, like Susan Sontag

In the background, the work Vetrata di poesia visiva ("Visual Poetry in Stained Glass"), which artist Lucia Marcucci (one of the most emblematic figures of the Italian avant-garde) conceived as an in-situ installation, transforms the show venue into a grandiose stage punctuated by immense light boxes, nodding to the sacred dimension of the stained-glass windows in Gothic cathedrals.

Underlining the solemnity of the moment, the vocero, a Corsican song expressing the pain of women mourning their husband or child, is performed by twelve singers from the vocal ensemble Sequenza 9.3, conducted by Catherine Simonpietri. Their interpretation reflects the possible choices of the future and beauty experienced as an inner and artistic search.

One of Maria Grazia Chiuri’s essentials, the men’s shirt, is reinvented. By turns, it becomes a tunic or a dress, echoing Dior’s emblematic shirtdress, paired with wide, striped trousers or shorts. It is also worn under ample coats in heathered fabrics. Patchworks of scarves with paisley and floral motifs, embellished with pieces of lace for a romantic collage effect, accessorize a series of dresses and trousers, opening up infinite horizons for the imagination.

A work of art.

Kudos Dior! And thank you.

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Infos : Dior.com

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