‘We should all be feminists’ – so read a T-shirt in Maria Grazia Chiuri’s debut show as womenswear creative director of Dior, shown in September 2016. It was a garment that would prove prescient to the Italian designer’s tenure at the house so far – for one, her collections have been infused with a celebration of powerful, creative femininity, and secondly, it was taken from a work by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a precursor for the wide-ranging collaborations with women artists that have followed. These have included a show set by Judy Chicago, a photographic tome by Brigitte Niedermair, and the invitation to Grace Wales Bonner to give her riff on the house’s bar jacket as part of Chiuri’s Cruise 2020 collection.
La Galerie Dior exhibition celebrates women artists
Brigitte Niedermair’s image of Chiuri’s ‘We Should All Be Feminists’ T-shirt
It is in this spirit that a new exhibition opens at La Galerie Dior, the house’s recently inaugurated museum at 30 Avenue Montaigne (opening 75 years after Christian Dior presented his first collection there, the renovated hôtel particulier also houses a vast new flagship store, restaurant and luxury private suite, where VIP shoppers can stay overnight). The exhibition celebrates Dior’s ongoing collaboration with women artists – particularly under Chiuri – as well as notable personalities from the house’s history. As with all of Dior’s projects, the exhibition is rooted in the house founder’s life and design philosophy; in this case, the exhibition recalls Christian Dior’s own love of art, having begun his career as a gallery owner. Art, design, music and literature would continue to inform his collections until his death in 1957.
As such, one of the exhibition’s most precious objects is a 1930s painting by female Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington, which Christian Dior displayed while he was a gallerist (ever the soothsayer, Carrington’s work has recently enjoyed a renaissance, featuring prominently in the Tate’s ‘Surrealism Beyond Borders’ in 2022). Another figure in the exhibition is Niki de Saint Phalle, the American painter and sculptor whose colourful works would inspire Marc Bohan, the house’s creative director from the 1960s through to the 1980s. Later, Grazia Chiuri would use this relationship as inspiration for her own S/S 2018 collection.
The ‘chambre aux merveilles’ which features various Lady Art handbags
Elsewhere, the exhibition explores the works of the numerous artists who have collaborated with Grazia Chiuri, among them Eva Jospin, Brigitte Lacombe and Katerina Jebb – their various works providing reflections of the designer’s collections. Completing the exhibition are different interpretations of the Lady Dior handbag, created by female artists as part of the house’s Lady Art project. Displayed as a wunderkammer of curiosities, the designs demonstrate the breadth of Grazia Chiuri’s collaborative project, one that continued this past fashion week when she united with Italian artist Elena Bellantoni on the set for her S/S 2024 ready-to-wear collection. There, enormous screens flashed between Bellantoni’s playful send-offs of sexist advertisements, from the 1950s to now.
The exhibition runs from 24 November 2023 to 13 May 2024 at La Galerie Dior, Paris.
Katerina Jebb’s scan of a historic Dior gown
-
‘I wanted to create a sanctuary’ – discover a nature-conscious take on Balinese architectureUmah Tsuki by Colvin Haven is an idyllic Balinese family home rooted in the island's crafts culture
-
‘Concrete Dreams’: rethinking Newcastle’s brutalist pastA new project and exhibition at the Farrell Centre in Newcastle revisits the radical urban ideas that changed Tyneside in the 1960s and 1970s
-
Mexican designers show their metal at Gallery Collectional, Dubai‘Unearthing’ at Dubai’s Gallery Collectional sees Ewe Studio designers Manu Bañó and Héctor Esrawe celebrate Mexican craftsmanship with contemporary forms
-
‘He immortalised the birth of the supermodel’: inside Dior’s career-spanning retrospective of photographer Peter LindberghOlivier Flaviano, head of Paris’ La Galerie Dior, talks us through a new Peter Lindbergh retrospective, which celebrates the seminal German photographer’s longtime relationship with the French house
-
Fashion features editor Jack Moss’ style gift guideWallpaper* fashion features editor Jack Moss compiles his fantasy festive wish list – from a surreal Bottega Veneta tree decoration to Hylton Nel’s Dior-approved ceramic cats
-
Inside ‘De toutes beautés!’, the Louvre’s new exhibition narrating 10,000 years of beauty ideals through art‘De toutes beautés!’ marks the beginning of a three-year partnership between the Louvre and L’Oréal Groupe. India Birgitta Jarvis reports on the show for Wallpaper*
-
What makes a ‘winter perfume’? The Wallpaper* guide to fragrances that linger on the skin and in the airThe Wallpaper* guide to winter perfume has been compiled by our beauty editor Hannah Tindle, including scents from the likes of Bottega Veneta, Frederic Malle and Marissa Zappas
-
‘A hat is an alibi, a fabulous lie’: radical milliner Stephen Jones on his career-spanning new Paris exhibitionAs ‘Stephen Jones, Chapeaux d’Artiste’ opens at Paris’ Palais Galliera, the British milliner tells Wallpaper* about the transformative power of hats, the one designer he wishes he’d collaborated with, and his lifelong love of Paris
-
Maude’s Brâncuși-inspired sex toys go on display in a new Paris exhibitionMaude’s design-led vibrators are now on display at Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, as part of ‘Private Lives: From the Bedroom to Social Media’. Brand founder Éva Goicochea talks to Wallpaper* about partnering with the museum and opening up cultural conversations around sex
-
Kim Jones to exit Fendi after four yearsFendi has announced that Kim Jones is leaving his role as artistic director of womenswear and couture at the Italian house, though will remain at Dior Men
-
The breathtaking runway sets of S/S 2025, from beanbag animals to a twisted living roomWallpaper* picks the best runway sets and show spaces of fashion month, which featured Bottega Veneta’s beanbag menagerie, opulence at Saint Laurent, and artist collaborations at Acne Studios and Burberry
