Back to the Sixties with a modern Miss Dior

Chez Dior, it was back to the Sixties and back to Marc Bohan in the latest show by the marque that riffed on 1967, the year of the birth of the house’s first ready-to-wear collection, Miss Dior.

A youthful, jaunty collection that celebrated the 60s revolutionary impact on women, and on the wider culture. An era, when fashion shrugged off the confines of haute couture and looked to the streets for a new modern vernacular.
 
The result, fall 2024 clothes constructed for women of action, worn by a cast that marched swiftly around a huge custom-built show space; built ingeniously on top of the Bassin Octogonal, or main pond of the Tuileries Gardens.

At first sight, an understated fashion statement, by Dior’s Italian-born women’s creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri, with double-face cashmere cabans, lean A-line dresses, to the knee skirts and classic trenches. Though many featuring hand-painted graffiti examples of the phrase Miss Dior, in a two-inch-wide script on dozens of looks.
 
Made for busy women and anchored by great new flat-soled boots in patent leather cut at the back with straps and golden buckles, golden ball kitten heels, or wide patent leather knee boots finished with beaded ankle chains.
 
“In my view, Marc Bohan’s influence and talent is often underestimated. Perhaps because he came right after Yves Saint Laurent and Monsieur Dior? But, Bohan had a profound influence on fashion and on Dior, where he created its first ready to wear. That was a revolutionary move in a maison devoted to couture for over 20 year at that time. Huh! In a sense it was feminist, long before women had begun burning bras,” insisted Chiuri with gutsy Roman emphasis in a pre-show preview.
 
A collection that also referenced Bohan’s path-breaking strategy of working with original cotemporary fine artists and incorporating their ideas into his collections. Since Chiuri’s other big inspiration was Gabriella Crespi, a uniquely gifted fellow Italian who collaborated with Bohan, who commissioned her to make curvy tables and lamps for the French brand’s boutiques. Some of them are still in Dior’s famed archive, even though it’s difficult to track down works by Crespi, who often worked in bamboo. By definition, a fragile material.
 
Her ideas seen in the color palette; never before have we seen so much beige, sand and bamboo hued looks in a Dior show, even if leavened with red plaids, signature gray and faded denim blue.
 

And in the latest magnificent Dior set, courtesy of Indian artist Shakuntala Kulkarni, who developed eight towering bamboo, cane and raffia statues – suggesting princesses, samurai gals and empowered amazons. Presented on a 20-meter diameter circle. On the walls, huge paintings of mythical Rajasthan warrior women, suggesting “a versatile femininity, reactivating to that key moment of creative freedom of which Miss Dior is the emblem,” argued Chiuri in her program notes.
 
The other key element was the scarf, a key element in Maria Grazia’s own wardrobe and in Dior. The designer found so many in the archive, she ended up commissioning a whole book on the accessory. Entitled Dior Scarves it will come out this spring.
 
“My mother always wore scarves and so did I growing up. My grandmother would even wear them down in the country!” she laughed.
 
Building drama in the show with a remix of France’s favorite runway song Je t’aime moi non plus, by Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, as the action turned to evening. Cheetah print coats and jackets; post modern flapper dresses with fringes and beautiful beaded columns, again with a hint of Crespi’s designs.
 
In short, a succinct statement by the designer in Paris with the most coherent game plan.