This is not the first time Dior has urged us all to be feminists. The one piece that had the fashion world talking was the We Should All Be Feminists slogan tee last September. The stand out garment has since been sported by Natalie Portman, Jennifer Lawrence, Rhianna and Chiara Ferragni, respectively.
Maria Grazia Chiuri has almost been in power for a year as Dior’s womenswear artistic director and has remained tenaciously true to her trademark tropes. Dior’s SS/18 collection is inspired by female artists and the female force of the 1960s. Niki de Saint Phalle worked as Chiuri’s muse. Photographs of the French-American painter and sculptor during the female liberation piqued Chiuri’s interest and was the catalyst of this season’s show. Chiuri paid homage to Niki through mirror mosaics, dragons and multicolored hearts.
It was the question “Why have there been no great women artists?” though that caught the eye of onlookers and the fashion industry. The question which was initially posed by Linda Nochlin in her groundbreaking 1971 essay undoubtedly challenges the traditionally male conversation in art history and fashion. The Russian model, Sasha Pivovarova opened the show in a quintessentially Parisian outfit, wearing high waisted jeans, a denim hat and the Breton shirt emblazoned with the words.
Backstage, on the relationship between women’s lives and their clothes Chiuri said: “Sometimes we think that fashion changes women but what really happens is the opposite. Women change, and so fashion has to change as well.”
The treatise on the patriarchy played a key role in the show. Models wore flat sneakers paired with ball gowns, fishnet boots and leather jumpsuits. As Karlie Kloss, Emily Ratajkowski, Alexa Chung, Camille Rowe and Bianca Jagger looked on from the frow, the show closed with a series of mosaic gowns in Chiuri’s now signature silhouette.
Chiuri isn’t the other designer to display an empowering message though. Anthony Vaccarello, the genius behind YSL provoked the audience by dressing his models in revealing dressers and shoes they had trouble walking in.
As Maria Grazia Chiuri celebrates her one-year anniversary and Dior celebrates 70 years, it is clear that Chiuri has transformed the French fashion house, creating a luxury wardrobe for the modern woman while starting a political conversation in the field of fashion.
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