Dior’s passage to India

«I wanted to pay homage to India, a country in which I have been dreaming of doing a runway show for years», Maria Grazia Chiuri, womenswear’s creative director at Dior, told MFF. The starting point for fall 2023 lies in typical elements of the subcontinent reinterpreted with a sporty and comfy attitude. «I have a good working relationship that has linked me for many years to India and to Karishma Swali, who, also with our support, carries on the Chanakya ateliers and Chanakya school of craft in Mumbai». A place of confrontation, study, emancipation for many women, a laboratory where to explore those different kinds of craftsmanship on which Chiuri has been reflecting for some time, making the visionary spirit of the Maison’s founding designer her own.

«Taking one of our shows abroad is grueling work, which can take up to eight months. However, it is also an experience of growth and meeting world-class artisans, embroiderers, and creatives. This is also why I would like to bring a show to Mumbai». From the archives emerge images of Marc Bohan travelling to India in april 1962 to present 100 designs in Mumbai and Dehli, on the horizon of a new collaboration between France and India, in years of change, which fashion punctually recorded. Those were the years of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s movie Notes for a film on India and Jean Renoir’s The river. «Perhaps only the Greek tradition has had as much influence on our research on draping», Maria Grazia Chiuri recalls in the meeting with the Italian press, as she shows the Japanese cotton grisaille bustier that unrolls as a sash over the wrap-over skirt. «My approach always tries to take up tradition by lightening it with practicality of use and a taste for comfort and sport», she explained.

Chiuri uses color palettes and materials that showcase the common influences shared with Karishma and works on the forms of a traditional way of dressing. A glossy color block sequence in silks, from greens to yellows to pinks to purples, is molded into the shapes of stylized coats, straight skirts inspired by the sari and traditional Indian styles, and then into pants, small boleros, jackets, and breast covers, sort of clothing genealogies defined by different cultures and sartorial heritages. Embroideries are the protagonists, engines of research into the endless possibilities of this technique. «In India, embroidery is a traditionally male work, done by professionals with over 20 years of experience. By supporting Chanakya, we have trained over 450 women over six years». Embroidery becomes a tool to narrate, through the relationship between Dior on the one hand and, on the other, the Chanakya ateliers, the Chanakya school of craft and the multiple landscapes of India: a map that highlights and mixes different techniques, which through the actions of the school become women’s heritage, a tool simultaneously of creativity, excellence, and empowerment. They are geometries that frame silver sequins or rhinestones in the gold, they are decorative motifs that take up the Toile de Jouy in a kaleidoscope of colors, enriched by the elements of Indian landscapes, or the Jardin Indien floral motif, already exploded in many chromatic variations in the silk of pajamas, in shirts, in dresses. A repertoire in which the elements can be reassembled in endless ways and in which there are no hierarchies.

Judgment. Maria Grazia Chiuri builds a collection that becomes dialogue. The collaborative dimension she expresses for Dior’s fall 2023 reveals a different idea of authorship, one that welcomes conversations between multiple voices and multiple savoir-faire and draws a three-dimensional landscape generated by the encounter of a plurality of cultural heritages that look at each other, approach and intertwine. (All rights reserved)