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International personalities, including Jennifer Lawrence and Natalie Portman, graced the front row on Tuesday, February 27, as Dior paid tribute to its 1960s pop-culture zenith during Paris Fashion Week. The collection underscored the genesis of Miss Dior in the 1960s, a pivotal era when the label commenced the provision of ready-to-wear collections to the broader public.
The inaugural ensemble presented on the runway was a modest beige suit adorned with the Miss Dior logo, evoking the appearance of screen-printing. The collection offered a lavish fusion of nouveau riche fantasy, encompassing materials ranging from gabardine to the quintessential little white dress, traversing through tweed and incorporating more urban elements such as denim and leopard-print styles.
The palette of white, beige and gold took inspiration from Marc Bohan, who led Dior’s creative endeavors for over two decades following the founder’s departure; Bohan passed away in September. The Miss Dior line emerged amidst the revolutionary fervor of 1968, presenting a bold new vision of femininity characterized by psychedelic accents and short, audacious cuts. This line was named in honor of the founder’s sister, Catherine Dior, a heroine of the resistance who endured harrowing experiences in a Nazi concentration camp. This narrative is currently explored in the Apple TV series The New Look. Stars such as Ben Mendelsohn, portraying Christian Dior, and Maisie Williams, embodying Catherine Dior, attended Tuesday’s showcase.
“I wouldn’t say I’ve become a fashionista since doing the show, but I’m certainly more appreciative of the role that fashion plays,” Mendelsohn said to AFP. “I’m still really just sort of hit with the force of the looks and the enormous variety of it, I mean there’s a lot of pieces there!”
The audience also included luminaries from the music industry, such as Rosalia and Blackpink’s Jisoo, the latter drawing a considerable throng of young enthusiasts to the Concorde plaza. The commencement of the womenswear autumn/winter collections was marked earlier in the day with the typically sophisticated stylings of Spain’s Victoria and Tomas. Their showcase, inspired by Auguste Rodin’s The Kiss, was distinguished by an abundance of knotted details and scarves seamlessly integrated into dresses that conjured images of classical sculpture.
“We wanted to show all these pleats we found in the sculptures, in the pants, wool coats, the sweaters,” Victoria Feldman stated to AFP. The duo, a rarity in the fashion industry, established their brand in 2012 following their meeting at a Parisian design school. “The Kiss is really a balance between something very heavy and cold like marble and something warm and fast like movement,” Feldman elucidated.
With AFP
