In Defense of Dior
In Defense of Dior
Designer Maria Grazia Chiuri's collections get dragged on social media, but she's doing something few will.
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The couture collections walked in Paris this week and as has become routine, Dior designer Maria Grazia Chiuri’s show got dragged on social media.
It’s easy to quickly swipe through runway images of the clothes, minimalist designs in shades of black, gray, and cream, some of them sparkly, and think “boring.” However, to dismiss this show as dull or “not couture enough” would be a mistake when Chiuri uses her shows to make the kinds of statements that are sorely needed in this business. (To be clear, couture by definition refers not to aesthetic but to the way a garment is made — by hand.) In 2022, when consumers are more concerned about where their clothing comes from, how it is made, and fashion’s relationship to colonization than ever before, I’m baffled that her approach is not more celebrated.
This show was dedicated to showcasing embroidery as not just decoration, but the foundation of garments. Jess Cartner-Morley covered the show for the Guardian, reporting that before it walked, Chiuri said, “There is an idea that Indian embroidery is something cheap,” adding, “We talk a lot about the incredible ateliers we have here in the Avenue Montaigne. But Indian artisans make embroidery with just the same knowledge and expertise and depth of tradition as embroidery in France and Italy. This excellence is not just ours.”
The story continues:
“To be a couture brand today comes with a responsibility to support the fashion community all over the world,” she said, adding that this responsibility has intensified with the damage done to many livelihoods by Covid.
“We share a connection, because in Italy, where I come from, and in India, there is a generational problem with savoir-faire disappearing. Families push their kids towards studying, or to jobs like becoming a doctor, because in fashion we talk too much about the designer who makes the sketch and not enough about all the other important jobs.”
The show took place in the gardens of the Musée Rodin in Paris, the runway lined with colorful tapestries made by the Chanakya School of Craft in Mumbai, representing works by Indian artists Madhvi and Manu Parekh. I’ll admit that I didn’t adore the clothes at first glance. But how can a runway slideshow do justice to the things Chiuri is talking about? It can’t, and the collection really came alive for me when I saw it in videos, which is another reason I think TikTok will soon replace Instagram as fashion’s top social network. Static runway photos simply do not do allow the craftsmanship of clothes like these to shine. (I wouldn’t be surprised if, as vertical video becomes more the norm on social media, Vogue Runway and the like pivoted to a video-first, TikTok-like format.)
Chiuri became the first woman in the history of the house to lead design when she was appointed in 2016. Dior is considered to be one of the most famous, most luxurious fashion labels ever, meaning Chiuri has arguably the best design job in the world. If the significance of her appointment is lost on you, remember that designers are disproportionately male. In September 2016, Business of Fashion reported that just 37 percent of designers at Paris Fashion Week were women. Despite being the target customers for much of what the industry produces, women are severely underrepresented across fashion’s upper ranks.
I wish a woman leading a house like Dior didn’t signify progress (h/t also to Virginie Viard at Chanel, whose collections are also the regular subject of social media dragging). Of course, representation for BIPOC people in the fashion industry is worse than that of women. Last year, the New York Times asked 69 brands to answer questions about diversity in effort to assess how much progress had been made since fashion promised to change in 2020, and reported, “Of the 69 designers or creative directors at those companies, only four are Black.” Those included Virgil Abloh, who recently died; Balmain’s Olivier Rousteing; Nina Ricci co-designer Rushemy Botter; and Kanye West. Rihanna became the first Black woman designer for LVMH when her Fenty line launched in 2019, but that project has been put on indefinite hold.
Chiuri worked her way up to this job over many years. She hired Pierpaolo Piccioli in the accessories department at Fendi in 1992. They moved on to the accessories department at Valentino, where they worked for the man himself before he stepped down in 2008, to be succeeded by Alessandra Fachinetti, who lasted two seasons before Chiuri and Piccioli took over. When Chiuri left to lead design at Dior in 2016 after the departure of John Galliano successor Raf Simons, Piccioli stayed behind. He continues at Valentino to wide acclaim. (Simons is now co-creative director at Prada.)
Stepping into that role when Chiuri did would not have been easy for any designer. When she took over, the fashion public seemed underwhelmed by Simons’s direction, likely still wedded to the fantastical shows Galliano had made synonymous with the house. But Chiuri made it clear from the beginning that her runways would make a different kind of statement. Her first show, for spring 2017, included the title of the Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie TED Talk and book We Should All Be Feminists on a T-shirt. (Adichie sat front row at that show as Chiuri’s guest of honor.) Chiuri reflected on this moment in an interview with Sarah Mower for an August 2019 Vogue story about the rise of women designers:
“I was 51, thinking about all the phases of my life and reflecting on what society puts on a woman as a wife, a daughter, a mother,” she says. “To express your craft in fashion now is not just about making an unbelievable dress—as a designer and as a woman, I think you have a responsibility to read the changing age.”
Her overt feminist message appeared again on the Dior runway in February 2020, when models walked beneath huge signs reading “CONSENT” and “WOMEN RAISE THE UPRAISING.” In another Vogue story, Luke Leitch summarized some of the collaborative work that was becoming Chiuri’s signature:
Further voices contributing to Chiuri’s chorales have included those of legendary art historian Linda Nochlin (why have there been no great women artists? on another T-shirt) and artist Judy Chicago (who created a towering installation for Dior’s spring 2020 haute couture show). She has also welcomed contributions from the Chanakya School of Craft in Mumbai to realize the set for that same Chicago-inspired couture show, and both Grace Wales Bonner and the artist Mickalene Thomas designed Bar jackets for last year’s sensational cruise show in Marrakech. (This exploration of intersections between African and European traditions also included collaborations with Pathé Ouédraogo and Uniwax.)
This is not to say Dior is perfect, by any means. For instance, I would love to see more diversity in runway models’ body types and ages. Its supply chain also deserves as much scrutiny as any fashion company’s, and I wonder if Chiuri’s recent couture show was in part a reaction to a 2020 New York Times story that revealed embroiders for some of the world’s top luxury houses, Dior included, were working under deplorable conditions in India:
At the top of a staircase covered in dirt and sequins, several dozen Indian artisans hunched over yards of fabric, using needles to embroider garments for the world’s most powerful fashion brands.
They sewed without health benefits in a multiroom factory with caged windows and no emergency exit, where they earned a few dollars a day completing subcontracted orders for international designers. When night fell, some slept on the floor.
But one of the primary social media conversations about of her work over the past couple of years has been that it’s just boring and I guess not outré enough, or not outré in the right ways. (And I don’t want to link out to any random people who have said this stuff, not that you flawless Back Row readers would ever troll them, but as wisened consumers of media, I trust you’ll understand.)
Perhaps these critics expect all couture to walk the same path as today’s Schiaparelli, which I have called clickbait, and which has been revived in recent years with a mix of outlandish pieces. These include various permutations of sculpted breasts (sometimes just one per outfit, another time with a golden nursing infant), lungs (with rhinestone-studded bronchioles), and I’m not even sure how to describe this top (necklace?) which positions gold metal spirals over nipples, concealing them as well as you might imagine. (To be fair, I also appreciated this last Schiaparelli collection much more after I saw it in videos.)
Chiuri’s Dior, in its restraint, looks to me like it’s made by a woman who has lived a life and worked a career while wearing clothes (even if her couture clients might not have to bother with something as pedestrian as a job). Fashion needs to do so much more to acknowledge and improve working conditions for the global community of skilled workers who make clothes but are too often totally unappreciated by wealthier consumers. (This should define the conversation around sustainability in fashion much more so than it does; an industry that isn’t sustaining human life certainly isn’t sustainable.)
Healthy debate can and should be had about things like whether Chiuri’s approach is enough. Or the merits of fashion collections — for conglomerates like LVMH — that contain activist messages. And not everyone looking at fashion has to agree on which designs to love! Knee-jerk reactions to clothes are important because that’s what defines our taste as individuals and drives our purchases (that said, we could all probably afford to buy less stuff).
Chiuri seems perfectly safe in her role. Her couture sales were recently cited as strong by LVMH and for all the detractors online, veteran fashion critics like The Cut’s Cathy Horyn sing her praises. But it’s sad that, as the first-ever woman in her job, her work is often just reduced to bad or boring when it’s so much more than how it appears. Which, many would agree, is when fashion is at its best.
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So enjoy reading your pieces! Agree with so much you say here (and in other posts). I love that Chiuri emphasizes the embroidery work of Indian ateliers, and names the Chanakya school in Mumbai. I think both craftsmanship/savoir-faire AND design in non-Western countries are not celebrated more.
Thank you for this very thoughtful piece.