I know I quote Vogue’s write-ups a lot here, but there is a lot of thoughtful and well-written work in these capsules, and I’m going to abridge one again here to explain what Dior was doing for this show. You may recall last season they had pro-feminist slogans; here’s the background for this one:
This May, France will mark the 50th anniversary of the Paris student protests of 1968. Maria Grazia Chiuri recently saw an exhibition about the events of that year in Rome, and she said it made her wonder what the house of Dior was doing at the time. A little digging revealed a rather fabulous discovery: a black-and-white photograph of chic young women protesting outside the Dior store because there were not enough miniskirts inside. (Hey, to each her own.) […] Dovetailing as it has with the Trump era, her Dior tenure has coincided with a great feminist uprising. She’s held up a mirror to feminism’s fourth wave, quoting the Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie one season and the art theorist Linda Nochlin in another. This season, Chiuri saved almost all the slogans for her set, which elaborately reproduced magazine covers and protest art of the late 1960s; by connecting them, she subtly hinted at their interdependence. No one—no American, at least—who walked through the doors could’ve failed to make a connection with the ongoing protests against NRA-beholden politicians in the wake of the Parkland, Florida, school shooting. That is a student-led movement, too.
And beyond being reflective of protest art, a sweater that says NO NO NO all over it reflects MY inner monologue (and sometimes my outer monologue) about 95 percent of the time.
