Christian Dior Spring/Summer 2018 Haute Couture Review
Maria Grazia Chiuri has finally grabbed hold of the infamous and challenging Maison de Christian Dior and created something incredible. Though the Italian designer was transferred to Dior from Valentino in July of 2016, she had a few missteps in terms of creative product development and capturing the grandioseness of Dior. Its wonderful to finally have a woman at the helm of Dior, after so many years of solely men. Chiuri has allowed for truly feminine silhouettes to shine though, instead of the aggressive, striking, and avant-garde styles by previous directors like John Galliano or Raf Simons.
Thankfully, Chiuri took the avant-garde art movement of Surrealism as inspiration for her third Couture collection for the house. Wonderful Dalí-esque facial features floated in mid-air amongst a massive birdcage, lifted above a checkerboard marble floor. This setting matched the garments. The iconic bar jacket was updated in softer materials and flowing mid-length skirts for modern formalwear for customers that don't want frivolity. Wonderful twists and swirls of optical illusion fabric combinations ran throughout the entire collection. Inverse cutouts of butterflies, peacock feathers, and tattoo handwriting were especially good at capturing the symbolism of womanhood in adjacent to this element of the surreal. One specific Surrealist artist, Leonor Fini, was someone who Monsieur Dior found interesting before he created couture. Chiuri stated that she was interested in the way the Fini would take masks and clothes to form her art personality. Those fabulous masks the resulted, inspired by Fini, were some of the best headwear seen in a long time on any catwalk.
Demureness often runs a bit too heavily in Chiuri's Dior. The women she creates appear a little too young and childlike, contrary to the women who can actually afford and wear these clothes. However that demureness was spun on its head a bit this time around, and that childlike appearance was channelled into something rather like Twiggy in the Swinging Sixties, with babydoll eyes and skinny, skinny little bird legs. The women walking in the show looked a bit like the "movement" dancers à la "Sweet Charity" Bob Fosse's 1969 film; divine, surreal, and supreme.
Photos Courtesy of: VogueRunway.com