For Dior SS23, creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri looked to 16th-century Italian French queen Catherine de Medici as a means of exploring the inextricable relationship between fashion and power. An Italian noblewoman, de Medici married into the French court in 1533 at the age of 14. During her reign, she was dubbed ‘the serpent queen’ for her influence as both a wife and mother. de Medici was instrumental in the creation of several garments that have remained to this day, namely heels, corsets, and Burano lace.
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Chiuri updates these instrumental garments, with the corset given a quasi-geometric update, freeing its wearer from restriction and acting as more of a framing device. Lace and crinoline are used in abundance, adorning hooped skirts and floor-grazing robes, while delicate elbow-length gloves, knee-high boots, and curved baroque heels pay tribute to de Medici. There may perhaps be a touch of autobiography in Chiuri’s fixation on de Medici. Like the former French queen, Chiuri is also an Italian leading a French empire (of sorts), one that was historically solely run by men.
“Noncompliant with predetermined existences, women are capable of exercising power in many ways, including by escaping through the mind,” says Dior. “The power of fashion becomes the power of women, a form of awareness that draws on this attraction to the outside world, to what lies beyond perception, knowledge and common experience. Fashion dialogues with reality through artifice; the garments of the Court are transformed.”
Alongside ties to power, Dior SS23 also speaks to the link between fashion and place. A scarf from the Dior archives, printed with a map of Paris, partially inspired the collection (the map itself appears on a few items in the collection, including a trench coat and and a pants-and-corset set). Twice a year, the city of Paris becomes a backdrop for the fashion within, with the clothes colouring the landscape around it. “This collection pays homage to fashion as an art of invention, able to redefine the city of Paris over and over again, each and every time, allowing the multiple facets of its history to live on.”
Words by Esmé Duggan
