Maria Grazia Chiuri’s tenure as creative director of Dior has shown her to be an avid student of the house archive – and, indeed, of Christian Dior himself, whose fixations and obsessions have been refracted through the Italian designer’s contemporary, and distinctly feminist, lens.
For her A/W 2022 collection, Chiuri melded riffs on the historic silhouettes synonymous with the house – a version of Christian Dior’s 1947 ‘Bar Jacket’ was turned inside out, its padding exposed, for example – with a vividly futuristic sensibility. Garments were installed with illuminated tubes of wires, or overlaid with technical corsetry and gilets created in collaboration with Italian start-up D-Air Lab, the Dynamic Autonomy and Intelligent Robotics Lab (such innovations included air-bag technology and temperature-controlling elements). Dior described the collection as ‘suspended’ between past, present and future.
Past, present, future: ‘62-22’ shoes by Dior
The savoir-faire behind Dior’s ‘62-22’ shoes.
Such juxtapositions extended to the footwear, which saw Chiuri look towards the ornate footwear that Roger Vivier designed for the house in the early 1960s (in an early act of fashion collaboration, Vivier worked with Christian Dior for close to a decade, meeting the designer in 1953). The particular pair that Chiuri referenced to create the just-released ‘62-22’ shoe – its name a reference to the original shoe’s year of creation, 1962 – is notable for its intricate stitching and curved ‘comma’ heel (‘The innovative heel treatment adds tension and even a feeling of incredulity to his designs,’ says the Met Museum’s Costume Institute of a similar 1961 pair in its collection).
Here, the midcentury elegance of the original design is given a distinctive update with an overlaid strap in technical ultralight neoprene, which wraps around the ankle and is secured with anti-slip fastening inspired by D-Air Lab’s research. Fluorescent yellow stitching, the house says, is inspired by ‘the world of motorcycling’. Together with the various traditional embroidery – from mimosa flowers to a coral motif and sewn-on blue stones – the ‘62-22’ is an ode to Parisian savoir-faire, traditional and futuristic at once.
Watch how Dior’s 62-22 shoes are made in the short film by Mélinda Triana below.
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