Just beyond the illuminated passage where visitors enter La Galerie Dior, there is a photograph of the “We Should All Be Feminists” T-shirt that continues to define Maria Grazia Chiuri’s ethos as creative director of the women’s Dior universe. The assertive statement (from the title of a book by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie) strikes differently in this image by Brigitte Niedermair, however. Stretched across and bunched upon a wood board, it looks more like an assemblage artwork or makeshift sign than something that Rihanna and Natalie Portman have worn.
It is a fitting introduction to an exhibition where the living legacy of Dior appears alongside works from women artists who express this extraordinary fashion canon with their own meaning and experience.
Twice per year since the Paris museum opened in March 2022, La Galerie Dior restages its captivating presentation of archive creations, art, objects, and documents, which span Monsieur Dior’s upbringing to collections that bowed mere months ago.
This latest “scenographic narrative” brings together an array of talents—living and deceased—who exist within Chiuri’s generous and pluralistic feminine vision. Some artists, such as Niki de Saint Phalle, Judy Chicago, and Elina Chauvet, have played a central role in the collections or runway shows, while Katerina Jebb, Shourouk Rhaiem, Yuriko Takagi, and Constance Guisset are among those whose have contributed to special cultural projects.
According to director Olivier Flaviano, this is the first of the exhibitions to coherently play out through every room like a thread to follow from start to finish. Just as significant, he says that the presentation transforms the fashion, typically considered “the object” of an exhibition, into “the subject”—that is, there is an additional layer, a conversation that has taken place.
If you are among the roughly 650,000 people who have already experienced this richly detailed immersion into the maison, you will return to the same sequence of rooms while discovering a new selection of garments that correspond with the art on display. This is also motivated by preserving pieces that are too fragile to remain exposed for extended periods of time.
“We have a duty every six months to change the pieces and this offers us a way to create a new perspective on the history of Dior,” said Hélène Starkman, the cultural projects manager for Christian Dior Couture who walked me through the 13 themes, including The Dior Style, La Parisienne, and The 18th Century Spirit. “The Galerie is only one-and-a-half years old so it’s an amazing playground. It’s a Parisian place, a new space to show acquisitions. We have an opportunity to look further and deeper.”
There is still a darkened room conceived as an enchanted garden where delicate vines cascade from the ceiling; only now, it features Takagi’s painterly life-size photos of model-dancers juxtaposed with dresses on mannequins. There is still the accurate recreation of Monsieur Dior’s office at 30 Avenue Montaigne, likewise the space where visitors can peer down through a glass floor into the old atelier complete with models’ dressing rooms. And there is still the room conjuring a grand ball where mannequins in opulent gowns are standing as though on balconies. Until this exhibition ends on May 13, 2024, they will face Chicago’s immense fabric panels made for the spring 2020 haute couture show.
Among the highlights of the new installation: an expressive room that establishes a link between the past and present. A tribute to Saint Phalle more than her Nanas female figures, there are looks by Bohan, who became both a friend and a collector, and by Chuiri, who clearly embraced the double inspiration for her spring 2018 collection. The walls come alive with Saint Phalle’s drawings and even a vintage Vogue spread by Lord Snowdon who photographed the model-turned-sculptor wearing a slim black velvet look adorned with a flounced white collar.
Jebb’s “scanography portraits”—which entail hundreds of scans composed into spectral images, at once haunting and futuristic—appear in four separate contexts, including a standout series capturing one key silhouette, monochromatic and impeccably constructed, from every creative director.
Reached by phone, Jebb insisted that the entire composition—the gray backgrounds, the choice of models (from the lithe Camille Mervin-Leroy to the poised Setsuko Klossowska de Rola) are all integral to her process, which she described as “trying to paint with a machine.” Referring to the fashion, she said, “I don’t want the subject to be some empty vessel. The subject is treasured and valued. It would be empty and flat without the embodiment of the woman.”
Regarding Takagi, her distinctive technique—over eight seconds, she directs the dancers to move very slowly, then to speed up—results in graceful photos that articulate how the couturier approached design. “I believe that clothes on a person look so much more beautiful in movement and Monsieur Dior was talking about exactly the same thing,” said the Japanese artist, who has a background in design. Working with the maison marked her first time shooting haute couture. “It is made for only one person in the world and that energy comes into the one dress. There are emotions sewn into the clothes.”
The show’s most emotional element comes care of Chauvet in the brightly lit modern atelier room. Ordinarily, the pristine niches are filled with muslin toiles, the first models for finished dresses. Now picture these impeccably constructed forms covered with illustrations and words in red embroidery, vivid as blood. A realistic heart or a newborn baby, nature scenes and domestic scenes, naïve and uncomfortable motifs bursting forth from delicate pleating and voluminous bows. The Mexican artist enlisted 16 embroiderers for these pieces; the dresses first appeared at the end of Chiuri’s 2024 cruise collection while the jackets were made for the exhibition.
Chauvet explained how women’s struggles must be counterbalanced with signs of hope—the word delicately embroidered onto a bodice. “It is important to talk about the tough issues. But there’s a poetry to this aesthetic and I try to catch the beauty, as well,” she said.
Possibly the only outlier was a room showcasing the Miss Dior ready-to-wear that debuted in 1967 under Philippe Guibourgé. He was the assistant to Marc Bohan, the long-time artistic director who died in September of this year. If the looks weren’t memorable, they reflected the moment: short silhouettes and lighter volumes that epitomized an ingenue attitude shown in vivid colors and patterns revealing early monogram experimentation.
Meanwhile, the Room of Wonders lives up to its name. Small vitrines arranged wall-to-wall are filled with whimsical, sculptural jewelry designed by Claude Lalanne and Lady Dior bags reimagined by an impressive roster of contemporary artists. From the patchwork and beadwork by Mickalene Thomas to the beating heart by Joana Vasconcelos, every artist invited into the house maintains her own visual identity.
As Dior’s first female creative director, Chiuri has been deliberate in uplifting women. As she writes in the preface of Her Dior (the 2021 book whose cover is the Niedermair image), “My dream, my aspiration is that we, as women, look at ourselves with our own eyes.” But is there something distinctly feminine to the art she supports? Jebb offers a reply: “I think everything is reflected at the time in which it was made. If we make more sensitive work and are women then so be it. I don’t want to dismiss men and I don’t believe in feminist art. I just believe in being true to your art.”