Dior Fall 2024 Ready-to-Wear: Miss Dior Manifesto
Guests arriving at the Dior show stopped to film the installation at the center of the runway: nine life-size bamboo sculptures by Indian artist Shakuntala Kulkarni that looked like full-body armor.
Maria Grazia Chiuri’s collection was about a different kind of shield: the outfits that women adopted in the ‘60s as they made their first steps into careers in roles traditionally dominated by men.
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That era’s sexual revolution was accompanied by a transformation of luxury fashion, as made-to-measure haute couture gave way to off-the-rack clothes that women with independent incomes could buy for themselves.
Her lineup for fall channeled the era’s mix of confidence and ease with buttoned miniskirts, belted trenchcoats and slouchy pantsuits in a mostly monochrome palette. Black patent leather buckled boots with gold ball-shaped heels added a kinky edge to ladylike knee-length wrap skirts and boxy checked coats.
Back in the day, Yves Saint Laurent was the standard-bearer of the burgeoning women’s liberation movement with his provocative sheer designs, currently on show at the Yves Saint Laurent Museum in Paris.
But Chiuri wanted to pay tribute to the quiet revolutionary then at the helm of Dior — Marc Bohan, who in 1967 introduced the brand’s first ready-to-wear line, Miss Dior, itself the subject of a recent temporary exhibit at La Galerie Dior, the museum space at its historic flagship.
“His work at Dior was underestimated in some ways, but I think that it was very crucial,” she said in a preview. “He understood that women at the time were in a moment where they wanted to change their style of life. His dialogue was with the daughters of the clients at Dior.”
She lifted a slogan-style Miss Dior logo from a vintage scarf that prefigured the student protests that rocked Paris in May ’68. Its giant letters were plastered across her “manifesto” trenchcoats and skirts. Chiuri said she liked the way Bohan subverted the silk scarves traditionally associated with bourgeois style.
“They became like a white page where you can write a slogan,” she said. “All the scarves at that moment became like a flag, a way to use your voice.”
Chiuri has mined this youthquake moment before, but her take this season had a more polished edge. She was also inspired by Italian interior designer Gabriella Crespi, who worked with Bohan on a line of homewares. “She was very elegant and also formal,” Chiuri noted.
Crespi’s signature wide-brim hats punctuated the collection, and one could well imagine the effortlessly stylish designer slipping on a diamanté-edged shell top and skirt, or an oversized ivory double cashmere trouser suit.
Chiuri is not the only designer fascinated with the sporty and sleek ’60s styles that paved the way for the minimal chic of the Space Age era. It’s territory that’s been amply mined by Nicolas Ghesquière, whose Balenciaga-era designs were echoed in her pert windowpane check skirt suits and plaid outerwear.
But Chiuri, who was a teenager in the ‘70s, has a genuine personal connection to that era — witness the grainy photo of her as a pre-teen, posing alongside her mother in a dungaree minidress and white knee-high boots, that she posted on Instagram two days ago.
It goes a long way toward explaining her fondness for a period in history where all sorts of doors were opening for women, including her younger self.
Launch Gallery: Dior Fall 2024 Ready-to-Wear Collection
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