Put art at the heart of your life. Express who you are through a series of memorable gestures. Be unforgettable.
It was in the 19th century, in the heart of modern Paris, a place of freedom and attraction for artists and intellectuals described by Charles Baudelaire and later by Walter Benjamin, that clothing first became an essential component in the staging of one’s own personality, for both men and women.
First and foremost, it was the bohemians who expressed their independence through the way they dressed. Their lives take romanticism to the extreme, halfway between work of art and performance. Just like Aaron Rose and Joshua Leonard’s Beautiful Losers, the neo-bohemians of today’s Los Angeles for whom nothing matters, who oppose mainstream art and take part in new forms of street art, steeped in protest and mysticism.
Maria Grazia Chiuri, artistic director of women’s collections for the House of Dior, drew inspiration from these themes to design the Fall 2017 collection, keeping in mind this new generation of women who are adapting to the rhythm of the contemporary city, determined to assert their singularity. From this circularity full of inventiveness, from this way of seeing things in retrospect and moving forward according to a continuous wandering found in both fashion and art, from this way of bringing together, analogically and far from logically, the most diverse elements (styles, bodies, musculatures, objects, cries, words, clues, colors, postures), a series of pieces was born that can be composed and recomposed in a style each time personal.
A casualness that goes hand in hand with a search for singularity, focused on details, sometimes embroidered, sometimes sewn, sometimes printed. It’s the contrast between the deep glow of black velvet on bibs and the transparency of lace or voile enveloping the body. It’s the embroidery that recalls the House’s tradition, but also the abstract ethnic motifs, in their chromatic or naturalistic richness, such as the great tree of life that takes shape on skirts, coats and jackets.
It’s also the Bar suit, which Maria Grazia Chiuri isn’t afraid to use as a support for all possible embellishments to match the various elements of today’s wardrobe, such as jeans or flowing high-necked sweaters. Or those nostalgic antique colors, like old rose, that make a garment perfect, right down to the details. It’s this interpretation of the hooded cape opening onto a tulle dress in the gray so dear to Monsieur Dior – a rich, shimmering blue-gray – adorned with brilliant embroidery that reminds us that today, clothing is nothing more than a kind of device capable of influencing that very special energy, comparable to poetic pleasure, that permeates the body and determines our attitude.
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