Designer Maria Grazia Chiuri talks about aligning the fashion house with modern feminism ahead of the exhibition opening
Close your eyes and think of Dior. What comes to mind? Christian Dior never had a pet movie star, like Givenchy had Audrey Hepburn; nor a longstanding muse, as Catherine Deneuve was for Yves Saint Laurent. So the odds are, that you think first of all of the New Look suit. The wasp-waist jacket with a full skirt have come to stand for Dior and, beyond that, for fashion itself – the very idea of a must-have New Look. This suit is the first thing you see when you enter Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams, which opens at London’s V&A Museum on Saturday.
On Monday morning, as the exhibition installation was in its final stages, the head of Dior had arrived from the Eurostar, ready to host the opening parties. Maria Grazia Chiuri, Dior’s first female designer, was wearing jeans, black boots, and a thick-ribbed navy sweater under a clean-lined navy cashmere coat. Maria Grazia, as her team call her, wears her short hair bleached and slicked back, her eyes heavily rimmed with kohl, her knuckles encrusted with heavy jewellery. She is not the wasp-waisted, full-skirt type.
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