Dior Galerie: Empowered Sisters Taking Charge

Nov 24, 2023 

Dior Galerie, an exclusive fashion and art exhibit venue belonging to the French luxury goods company Dior, unveiled its newest showcase on Friday. 

This entailed a revamped version of its enduring array, dedicated to the brand's partnerships with female artists. 

The exhibition lacks a specific title, however, it is referred to as a rotational display. Its chief theme is the intersection of fashion and feminism. The exhibition facilitates a series of discourses, the primary two being a conversation between Mr. Dior and the women who served as his muses, and another between Dior’s current women’s creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri and a collective of modern artists influenced by fashion. 

The Galerie Dior, located next to Dior's historic flagship store on 30 Avenue Montaigne, has drawn in 650,000 visitors within the 20 months since its opening in March 2022. The gallery offers a unique fusion of remarkable fashion, high-profile clothing worn by celebrities, well-known movie clips, enchanting drawings, heirlooms, rare records and well-preserved historical artifacts.

 This extraordinary exhibit space brilliantly intertwines top-tier museum level presentations with the stylish sophistication associated with Dior. The collection covers the brand's 77 years of existence since its establishment in 1946. According to Maria Grazia, the new exhibit at the Galerie Dior provides a chance to study the history of the fashion house through two focal points closely related to her work and vision. 

One aspect highlights the substantial contributions of a diverse selection of women who have worked with Monsieur Dior and consequently influenced his creativity. 

The other element prominently displays the numerous interactions between the fashion house and multiple generations of female artists. 

The exhibition commences with a beautiful print from Brigitte Niedermair of a T-shirt showcased in Chiuri's inaugural show for Dior, which bore the phrase "We Should All Be Feminists". It drew inspiration from a book bearing the same title by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the renowned Nigerian author. 

The first room of the exhibit is devoted to Monsieur Dior, who harbored a passion for art even before creating his initial designs. He inaugurated two art galleries near the Champs Elysées in the 30s. An oil painting from one such gallery by the artist Léonor Fini is presented, along with a lovely pencil sketch of Dior by Nora Auric. The room is beautifully lit and filled with original dresses designed by Christian, sketches of costumes he created for movies prior to the founding of the house and a significant photo of Dior with what he referred to as his "état major de grande classe."

 All of these individuals, with the exception of businessman Jacques Rouet, were women. 

The iconic bar jacket designed by Monsieur features a series of extraordinary scanographic prints on matte paper by Katerina Jebb, orchestrated by Chiuri. Crafted by keeping normal household scanners a centimeter away from the subjects and the clothes and then constructing hundreds of pictures into fresh arrangements, the prints have an intriguingly spectral quality. 

The exhibit also includes several compelling photo series by Japanese photographer Yuriko Takagi, matched with the actual Dior designs she captured. Among the featured works are stunning images of creations by other Dior couturiers, from John Galliano’s 2007 voluptuous Satsuma-San look to a Raf Simons pointillist silk faille coat from 2015.

 The showcase pays special tribute to the affiliation between Bohan and Niki de Saint Phalle, the French-American artist recognized for her unique way of expressing feminist anger. However, she is best known for her exuberantly joyful Igor Stravinsky Fountain, created in collaboration with Jean Tinguely, located next to the Pompidou Center and admired by millions annually. 

A substantial portion of the exhibition focuses on the enlightening interaction between Chiuri and Elina Chauvet, who developed a performance art piece with canvases on models for Dior’s Cruise 2024 fashion show, held in Mexico City. A feminist artist, Chauvet symbolically uses red as a tool to resist male violence against women. Other exhibits include items that were commissioned specifically for this exhibition, such as a beautiful tapestry by Eva Jospin that surrounds a divine 2021 millefiori dress in silk gazar embroidered with flowers worn by Natalie Portman in a Miss Dior campaign. 

A later room featuring stars in Dior outfits displays Portman wearing a black and gold Dior dress to the 2018 Oscars, covered with a cape etched with the names of female film directors. The exhibit concludes with the Lady Dior bag, signed by female creators as part of the Dior Lady Art project, showcased in a Chambre aux Merveilles, or 'Cabinet of Curiosities'. One of the most inspiring aspects of the exhibition is its focus on feminism with a capital F, highlighting the brand's commitment to support women's empowerment, and its efforts to increase international recognition of female artists and makers.