It is utterly bizarre how you sometimes mention certain fashion references in a post and find yourself having to repeat them in the next one, when you spot specific links and connections in another design or collection.
In yesterday's post about Jean-Paul Gaultier's Haute Couture collection for example we mentioned Peggy Moffitt in Rudi Gernreich's designs, Germana Marucelli, Pierre Cardin, Roberto Capucci and Marc Jacobs, in connection with Op Art.
There were references to Op Art also in Christian Dior's collection (showcased last Monday, two days before Gaultier's show), even though they were reinterpreted via a different artistic movement.
The tent in the back garden of Musée Rodin where Dior's Haute Couture show took place was covered in black and white squares and the theme was replicated inside the tent, where the runway was transformed in an Alice Through the Looking Glass checkerboard floor.
Yet the sculptures of a torso, disembodied ears, eyes and random cages hanging from the ceiling revealed that this was no ordinary wonderland, but it was a surrealist playground in which black and white symbolised the colours of the subconscious.
In her first ready-to-wear season at Dior Maria Grazia Chiuri launched a slogan T-shirt stating "We Should All Be Feminists" that was followed by the provocative "Why have there been no great women artists?" shirt for the S/S 18 season.
Chiuri continued her feminist studies in her Haute Couture collection by looking at Argentinean painter, designer, illustrator and writer Leonor Fini, well-known for her paintings portraying impertinent and empowered young women.
A client of Dior, Fini was among the avant-garde artists the fashion designer exhibited in the early '30s, while he worked at the Galérie Bonjean.
Dior introduced Fini to Elsa Schiaparelli and the Surrealist artist ended up designing the bottle and packaging for her famous "Shocking" fragrance.
Chiuri included in the show notes a quote by Fini, stating "Only the inevitable theatricality of my life interests me", to explain to her audience the essence of the collection, suspended between the theatricality of high fashion and the balanced and rigorous and monastic (yet more wearable) moods Chiuri and her creative partner Pierpaolo Piccioli conjured up while working together at Valentino.
Chiuri's collection for Dior opened wih domino coats followed by surrealist chess board gowns, with black and white cubes twisting or gradually changing dimensions in a game of optical illusions.
Chiuri then introduced another theme with her woven basket dresses: employing velvet, organza and mink she built structures that reproduced one of the tropes of many Surrealist artists - the cage.
The sensually provocative yet ethereally delicate cage dresses fetishistically trapped and restrained the models' bodies, but also revealed them, while haute couture tattoos around their collarbones reproduced in black letters quotes by André Breton, author of the Surrealist Manifesto.
The quotes, turned into modern slogans, stated: "Au départ il ne s’agit pas de comprendre mais bien d’aimer" ("In the beginning it is not a matter of understanding, but of loving"), "L'amour est toujours deviant vous. Aimes!" ("Love is always before you. Love!") and "L'imaginaire est ce qui tend à devenir réel" ("The imaginary is what tends to become real").
At times, Chiuri interpreted Fini in a literal way, such as in the fringed cape that called to mind the artist's painting "Rogomelec".
At others she mixed Fini with other arty inspirations: the top of a dress reproducing in sequins the naked torso of a woman may have been a reference to Fini's "Portrait of Alida Valli" or a hint at Magritte's "Rape".
The dress may become a symbol for the #MeToo and Time's Up campaigns, but actresses intending to opt for black evening wear for the next red carpet ceremonies will find plenty of looks in the collection, going from tulle skirts matched with rigorous jackets to bar-jacketed trouser suits or the dramatic cloak with a tuxedo that closed the show. Grand, yet immensely sober and modest these designs have the potential of easily becoming the uniform of many modern stars.
Also the accessories were reinterpreted in a surrealist key: Stephen Jones' created graphic masks evoking balls (an exclusive Dior masked ball was organised the evening of the show) and as a reference to Peggy Guggenheim, who included Fini in the New York show "Exhibition by 31 Women" (1943).
The high-heeled shoes with feet outlines were instead a combination of René Magritte's "Le Modèle Rouge" with Pierre Cardin's 1986 men's footwear (and a remix of Comme Des Garcons' 2009 iconic design and Cèline's 2013 reinterpretation of the same shoes...).
Shoe straps shaped like gloves may have been references to American poet, novelist, diarist, filmmaker, photographer and collage artist Charles Henri Ford in a famous picture showing him in a costume covered with gloves designed by Salvador Dali (though gloves were another fascination of surrealist artists and designers in general...).
Yet behind all this perfection and the high fashion techniques employed in the designs, there was something that marred this collection.
First of all, the collection would have benefited from some editing (though surreal, the handkerchief dress in gold looked out of place View this photo and also seemed a Haute Couture version of something out of a Christopher Kane collection) and some designs were often reminiscent of the silhouettes Chiuri designed with Piccioli at Valentino.
Chiuri also picked bold graphics and patterns that, though filtered through the surrealist story she created around them, called to mind other fashion ghosts - from Gareth Pugh's S/S 2007 collection to Marc Jacobs' S/S 13 designs (yes, you may argue both Pugh and Jacobs were themselves borrowing from Op Art in these cases...), passing through Valentino's A/W 15 collection inspired by Emilie Louise Flöge and featuring quite a few black and white patterned motifs (View this photo).
There was also another story that cast a shadow on this collection: after seeing a dress from Dior Cruise 2018 collection on the cover of Elle magazine modelled by Bollywood actress Sonam Kapoor, New Delhi-based The People Tree accused the French fashion house of plagiarism. The prints on the Dior dress looked indeed extremely similar to the hand-printed ones created many years ago by the artisans working at People Tree, a collective of artists and designers co-founded in 1991 in the heart of Delhi by Orijit Sen and Gurpreet Sidhu and combining in their designs tradition with modernity.
Somehow it was a shame: Chiuri led us to believe that fashion can change through beauty, artisanal techniques and arty connections. But such faux pas shattered all her intents, proving that the industry has one and only mantra taken from The Verve's "Bitter Sweet Symphony" (a track that closed Dior's show - undoubtedly chosen for the refrain "I'm a million different people from one day to the next", almost a reference to Fini's passion for grand balls that allowed her to impersonate different characters...) stating "No change, I can't change, I can't change, I can't change..."
Comments