Dior kept to a pretty simple dark color palette at the latest runway show, surely owing in part to Maria Grazia Chiuri’s decision to use the runway and the backdrop as part of an art installation:
The show space — the house’s usual tent in the Tuileries Garden — had been transformed into an immersive video installation titled “Not Her,” by the artist Elena Bellantoni. Throughout the runway show, guests were presented with pop art-like images inspired by sexist vintage advertisements, alongside copy seemingly written from a feminist point of view — phrases like “No-body is yours / No-body is perfect / Every-body is performative,” and “Your body is poetic / Your body is political,” and “Woman is an active subject of the historical process and cannot be confined to being the object of desire of patriarchy.”
It would be neat if all of Dior’s very performative feminism included size diversity on the runways, but hardly any designers seem to care about that anymore, casting it aside like just another trend instead of an actual example of how poetic all bodies really are. That Fashionista piece also notes that much of Chiuri’s inspiration for the season was “rebellious, independent women, including witches, which can be seen in many medieval-style silhouettes and apron dresses,” which apparently means literal aprons, and also, per the show notes, a pattern that includes “phases of the moon, suns announcing the seasons, medicinal herbs and fantastical animals.” That fabric is the best bit. The rest is a hodgepodge — pretty skirts, but nothing to fight over.
