With a catwalk show in the gardens of the Musée Rodin that brought Rihanna and Kate Moss to the front row and a square mile of central Paris to a standstill, Maria Grazia Chiuri became the first woman to head the house of Christian Dior. It’s a position that arguably makes her the most powerful woman in Parisian fashion since Coco Chanel. The moment is significant not only because Dior is a byword for style that has currency all over the world, but because it’s a house that symbolises womanhood itself. Since its very beginning, with the nipped-in silhouette of the postwar New Look, Dior has represented femininity as surely as Chanel has stood for chic.
The most eyecatching look of the day was not a traditional waisted Dior Bar jacket, or a fairytale red-carpet gown of the type worn by Jennifer Lawrence at the Oscars, but a slogan T-shirt bearing the title of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Beyonce-sampled TED talk, “We should all be feminists”. The opportunity for a woman to redefine what femininity looks like could hardly come at a more culturally resonant time, as the first female US presidential candidate faces an opposing campaign mired in accusations of misogyny. Chiuri – who until now has kept a low personal profile, sharing her previous role at Valentino with a partner – made it explicitly clear that she intends to embrace the feminist symbolism of her appointment.
The new Dior is punchy and defiantly anti-pretty. Catwalk tributes to “strong women” are not new at fashion week – Donatella Versace almost has a patent on them – but the flat shoes, tightly tramlined braids and punk stomp down a floorboard catwalk were a remarkable contrast to recent Dior history. It’s only four years since Chiuri’s predecessor, Raf Simons, wallpapered the venue of his first show with fresh flowers. The collection came as a surprise after Valentino, where Chiuri made her name with graceful, slender gowns and exquisite workmanship. The very first outfit in this show was an off-white quilted jacket and cropped trousers, which the designer said were based on “the uniform of the female fencer [which] is, with the exception of some special protections, the same as for a male fencer”.
Valentino fans hoping to see that label’s distinctive Renaissance-princess silhouette amplified at Dior were disappointed. With hindsight, the Valentino moment that best predicted what Chiuri would do at Dior came last year, when she enlisted Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson (in character as Derek Zoolander and Hansel) to end a show with a surprise walk-off, part of a Zoolander 2 publicity campaign. Chiuri’s love of pop culture was clear when she paid homage in her first Dior show not to the house’s signature tailoring, but to the “J’adore Dior” T-shirt worn by Sarah Jessica Parker in Sex and the City. “There are many people who, when they think of Dior, they think of that T-shirt,” she said after the show.
The clothes themselves seemed very much secondary to the message. The honeybee motif that featured on Dior menswear last decade, when it was designed by Hedi Slimane, was embroidered on shirts, emblazoned in gold on handbags and embossed on the invitations. As well as the feminist message of questioning gender traditions that borrowing a menswear motif suggests, the designer said backstage that she wanted “her Dior” to reference not just Monsieur Dior’s early collections, but “so many other talents who have worked here – Slimane, Galliano, Raf Simons, Gianfranco Ferre”.
Chiuri, who is 52 and until recently lived in Rome, began her career at Fendi, where she was part of the team that created the famous “baguette” bag. In 17 years at Valentino, in partnership with Pierpaolo Piccioli, she brought back to vibrancy a brand that was languishing in semi-retirement.
Piccioli, who has taken sole control of Valentino and will show his first collection without Chiuri on Sunday, applauded from the front row.
