Close up: Christian Dior Cruise 2018

Maria Grazia Chiuri has appropriated the savoir-faire of the Dior ateliers, reinventing it to tell her story in ideal forms. A story that alters proportions and lengths to correspond to the contemporary landscape, in which sport mixes with haute couture, where tradition becomes ornamental abstraction and where materials see their status changed.



The celebration of instinct leads her to female figures who have chosen to isolate themselves in the desert to better understand the deepest and darkest recesses of the self. Such is the image of an artist like Georgia O'Keeffe, emerging from the sands of New Mexico.



The discovery of the Lascaux cave, in 1940, had a profound influence on the artists of the time. For Georges Bataille, it represented the dawn of the human race. The power with which animals are depicted (deer, horses, oxen) takes us back to the infancy of mankind and its relationship to nature, as well as the invention of art.



 In 1951, Christian Dior appropriated these rock paintings, making a print from them for his Ovale line, a form with allusions to primitive female depictions such as the Willendorf Venus. It is this wild and ancient femininity, linked to the magic of the earth, that guided Maria Grazia Chiuri, Artistic Director of the Dior women's collections, throughout the creation of her first cruise collection for the House.



Maria Grazia Chiuri is constantly seeking new ways to embrace and explore the Dior heritage. And it is the prehistoric wolves which emerge from the Lascaux cave to take their place on extraordinary silk jacquards where the ocher, almost gold in color, contrasts with blacks. Female handprints, reinterpretations of the original forms, become magnificent sequined embroideries in earthy shades.

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