Dior Lady Art: Artists Dress The Iconic Bag In Their Own Imaginations

Can a handbag ever be art? It’s a question Christian Dior asks each year, when the brand hands over the design of its famed Lady Dior bag to contemporary artists from around the world. The brief? Use the bag as a carte blanche canvas for their ideas. In collaboration with the maison’s craftspeople, this year a dozen artists dressed the famous bag in their own imaginations, transforming it into a collectible art object. Now in its seventh year, the Dior Lady art collaboration brings a new perspective to an emblematic piece. Heritage meets contemporary creativity. Savoir faire is infused with a spirit of innovation. Fashion and art become one.

WANG YUYANG 

Collaborating on a Dior bag came naturally to Beijing-based artist Wang Yuyang, for whom change has become a signature. “I have no fixed style, form, material or concept. Each work is destined to transcend my own mode of creation,” says the artist, who looked to his Moon paintings as the starting point for his Lady Dior designs. “In the dark of night, what people know best is the Moon that guides them along. I gave this Moon we know a new dimension to perceive and it brought out colours of unexpected beauty,” he says.

The classic, timeless nature of the Lady Dior appealed to the artist, who saw emotional echoes of his own work within the constancy of its design. Like his Moon paintings, the viewer can project their own meaning on to the object. “The Lady Dior may offer you new possibilities, but it remains the same. The Moon, in a similar manner, inspires me, just as it has different people in every era,” says Yuyang, who used the bag as a literal canvas, transposing his paintings on to its surface and creating craters and textures with embroidery, sequins and 3D reliefs. “Experimenting with new areas generates new and unforgettable experiences,” says the artist of his first ever fashion project. “It has allowed me to achieve innovations in form, materials and ideas.”

BRIAN CALVIN 

Brian Calvin’s paintings are steeped in his California roots. Vivid, colourful and sun- drenched, his portraits are created by remixing faces and features into something new.

“I want to make images that cut through the traffic. I hope that my paintings can capture a viewer’s attention and maybe slow down the world for a beat or two,” he says.

He usually works on large-scale canvases, with each detail highly considered almost to the point of abstraction. When Dior first approached Calvin about the collaboration, he was hesitant. He saw the bag as a canvas but wondered how on earth he was going to interpret his sizeable paintings into something more miniature. “It was initially difficult to imagine exactly how to translate my images in a suitable way; luckily, I was persuaded to agree.” Working closely with Dior’s artisans, Calvin’s paintings were rendered in intricate embroidery, threads, beading and raffia. We see faces on one side of the bag and, on the other, a giant eye in an azure sky (evoking, he says, an “eye of truth”). The artist was thrilled at the way his flat images had become a tactile and sensorial experience. “By incorporating embroidery, beading, printing and other materials, we were able to translate my images into a whole other language. The process allowed the images to morph into something else altogether. For me, that is what the creative process is all about.”

MINJUNG KIM

Korean artist Minjung Kim creates poetic, meditative colourscapes and collages that explore her lifelong quest for serenity, tranquillity and harmony.

“My works incite the viewer to explore oneself and the world in a constant search for quietude,” she says. “Through the repetition of actions, I want to achieve a meditative mind state, so that the resulting work transfers this state of quiet to the viewer.” The artist describes her practice as “an homage to delicacy”. Taking her existing artwork as the source for her Lady Dior designs, Kim said, “I wanted to put the emphasis on the sweeter elements of femininity and dreams, through the interplay of colour.” She has produced four different bags, with the one shown here based one of her collages. “I could not believe the way Dior’s team executed it. The craftsmanship is amazing!” she says of the Micro Lady Dior bag, which is embroidered with multicoloured threads, lurex and crystals.

Making the bags challenged her thought process. “It is the first time I’ve thought through the consumer’s mind. When I paint, I do so for myself but, in order to make these fashionable objects, I become more altruistic, which makes me feel useful. Art can be applied to useful things, but it is no longer art – it is the sharing of goods.”