Dior’s creative director of womenswear talks sisterhood, heritage and how she deals with her harshest critics.
in 2016, the Italian designer was flying solo for the first time after a fruitful creative partnership with Pierpaolo Piccioli, first at Fendi, then at Valentino.
While collaborations are nothing new for the fashion industry, Chiuri has raised the bar on creative partnerships by giving feminist artists the kind of stage they are often denied by the art establishment. in New York City, sponsored by Dior. Titled “Herstory,” it provides a broad overview of her work and includes some of the embroidered banners that Chicago created for Dior’s spring 2020 haute couture show.
“It’s not easy. It’s like using your voice really loudly and I think it’s important to push women to use their voice,” Chiuri continues. “Women sometimes are scared to take their space. They think it’s not appropriate.” The designer set the tone from her debut show, which famously featured a T-shirt emblazoned with “We Should All Be Feminists,” the title of an essay by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
“Today, I think that we are doing well at Dior and they immediately think that you are commercial. If a male creative director is doing well, it’s because he understands the spirit of the time. I think there is this kind of a double standard. It’s very strong, but probably because I’m just a little bit an outsider in some way,” she says with a shrug.
“Immediately, if you are a woman, they think that you have to create a dress for yourself, or you are a better creative only because you know what it means to have a female body. It’s full, full, full of stereotypical ideas. It’s very hard and honestly, it doesn’t come only from men. Women too create their limits because a lot of women believe in it, too,” she says.
“To create pieces that are timeless, this is the dream of all designers, I think. It’s not easy, but I want to build a little chapter of this big history of Dior and to create in this little chapter some elements that can stay for a long time,” she adds.“At Dior, he is looking at each single piece. He wants to see all the collections,” she reports, saying that Arnault is fascinated by craftsmanship and asks detailed questions about fabrication techniques.
She notes that with his voluminous New Look, which controversially required acres of fabric, Dior sought to “give a body to women that were without bodies,” having suffered the deprivation of wartime rationing. “Probably, I was less stressed by the heritage,” says Chiuri, who in 2019 was awarded the Legion of Honor, France’s highest civilian distinction. “My first approach was to think about Dior like a brand — probably my approach was too simple, and I saw also the reaction, that not everybody understood why I was not so .”
“The second aspect is that these shows around the world help the brand to be in contact with the local clients. This is a more commercial aspect, and especially if you are a global brand, because you can’t invite all the clients to Paris during fashion week,” she continues. Chiuri works only with female photographers, another facet that distinguishes her from other designers.
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The best designer handbags under £500 to put on your wish listZlata is freelance journalist and editor, covering all things fashion, beauty, consumer and lifestyle. She was previously Acting Digital Editor at Red and Special Projects Editor at Good Housekeeping. Coming from an international background, Zlata speaks four languages and has a passion for film and travel.
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