Feminist slogans on T-shirts are all very well, but has the creative director of the venerable French house really rewritten the rules of women’s fashion?
f you walked into Maria Grazia Chiuri’s office without knowing what she did for a living, you probably would not guess she’s a fashion designer. You might think, perhaps, that you had entered the study of an esteemed professor. Up here on the seventh floor of the Dior building in Paris, where the light from the Seine bounces off the zinc rooftops and takes on a chic silvery filter, there are no sketchbooks, no tape measure-draped mannequins, no bolts of taffeta or tweed.
These are not the sort of artistic projects that tend to have the boardroom reaching for their chequebooks. But here’s the twist. Since 2017, when Chiuri’s first collections went on sale, Dior revenues have. There are whispers that Dior could even be on track to catch up with its greatest rival for Parisian fashion bragging rights, Chanel. Avant garde feminist energy meets stadium-sized showmanship turns out to be a solid commercial strategy.
“The Dior shape is not just fashion,” Chiuri says. “It is the silhouette everyone has in their imagination as the fantasy body of a woman. It is the way Dior has always spoken about what is the ideal for women.” She is protective of the motives of the man she calls Mr Dior, who “made that silhouette when women in France were very skinny, because of the war. He wanted to give women a body that gave them optimism for the future.
To challenge the patriarchy, women need to speak more about sisterhood and community. Real feminism is about women supporting each other A year after her Dior debut, Chiuri opened her spring 2018 collection with another slogan T-shirt: “Why Have There Been No GreatArtists?”, the title of a seminal 1971 essay by feminist art historian Linda Lochlin, a copy of which was on every seat. This time, the words were printed not on a plain white crew neck but on a Breton striped, boat-necked T-shirt, underlining the juxtaposition of the message with the backdrop of Paris fashion week, the mothership of French chic.
A-listers Jesse Plemons, Kirsten Dunst, Rosamund Pike, Camille Cottin and Catherine Deneuve at the spring/summer 2023 show.The prospect of being accused of cultural appropriation and cancelled frightens many designers, but Chiuri is adamant that for Dior to retreat within a comfort zone of Parisian references is not the answer.
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