February 28, 2024 |
Say hello to Miss Dior. Maria Grazia Chiuri was inspired by the ready-to-wear line designed by Marc Bohan, which launched in 1967 and was aimed at young, modern women. Previous to that, Dior had stuck strictly to couture, hand-making clothes to fit individual women. This was the brand’s first step into ready-to-wear, as Bohan embraced a new generation of women who wanted a freer silhouette. He responded with little A-line suits, low heeled shoes that were easy to walk in, and clothes that reflected the sexual and social revolution of the time. Women’s lives were changing and silhouettes were changing to match their emancipated values.
Chiuri’s Dior collection tapped into that spirit of change and hope. She was only a child at the time, but remembers “there was a very positive energy” which she wanted to channel for the women of today. She supersized Bohan’s original hand-drawn logo for Miss Dior and splashed it over A-line skirts, belted macs, oversized blazers and loose-cut trouser suits, with not a nipped-in bar jacket in sight. This was her 2024 wardrobe manifesto. Easy, flattering, modern pieces. Everything was looser, shorter, freer.
Bohan was the longest serving Dior creative director (he worked for 30 years at the house, leaving in 1989) and has always fascinated Chiuri. He found a new silhouette, she said, for the modern woman. “He introduced trousers, and straight jackets – because a jacket with a waist is intended to be tailored to one person, and each body is different. He was thinking about how his clothes could speak to a new generation of women.”
Chiuri does the same. Her new Dior tailoring comes as a modern, slouchy trouser suit, or mod-style skirt suit cut above the knee in graph-paper tweed. Elsewhere the suit was paired back to a sleek shell top and matching A-line skirt. There were co-ords in boxy denim, city shorts worn under long coats and wrap-over tabard skirts worn over sporty shorts. These were clothes that had a youthful sense of purpose. And fun. Leopard print pony skin coats and jackets added a zing to the black, white, navy, neutral palette.
The models walked in a special catwalk installation created by Mumbai artist Shakuntala Kulkarni, whose cage-like sculptures represent armour for women, to protect them from the harms of patriarchy and misogyny. Chiuri doesn’t believe clothes exist in a vacuum. She has always brought a feminist point of view to Dior, but this collection with its youthful looks and optimistic mood, never felt heavy.
For evening, the look referenced an earlier generation of emancipated women, the 1920s flappers, with crystal fringed drop waist dancing dresses and dazzling two-piece party sets. Miss Dior knows how to enjoy life.
Photography courtesy of Dior.
