I'm very interested in exploring the 1950s,
because it was the most important period for Dior,
when Monsieur Dior founded his House.
One at sixty to sixty-two, twenty-one.
Sixty-eight, twenty-nine.
He was influenced by the French culture of the time.
Sixty-eight, seventy-two.
One that’s embroidered.
Perfect.
And everyone has a rather stereotypical view of the 1950s
that is linked mainly to North America,
and less so to Paris in the ’50s.
And what about Juliette Gréco at Le Tabou, then?
It’s a revolt.
It’s about a youth in revolt, and the intoxication of freedom.
Juliette Gréco was a singer,
but also an artist linked to the jazz scene
and the French literary culture,
who was friends with all the major authors.
What were you like as a girl, a good student?
Horrible, dreadful.
Extraordinarily lazy, withdrawn, wild,
and with my head permanently in the clouds.
Juliette Gréco was someone who had an acute sense
of the concept of individual freedom
and who was prepared to defend this sense of freedom.
She was very courageous.
Men suffer because they enjoy suffering.
If they’re not happy, they can leave.
It’s very simple.
She became a kind of beacon for this youth who,
in the post-war period, wanted to live at 100 miles an hour.
We must not forget that in the 1940s,
women had won the right to vote,
and in the 1950s,
Simone de Beauvoir wrote “The Second Sex.”
A very important book that encouraged
women to follow their own path.
For me, Édith Piaf, with her music and her life,
very much embodied a reference for those years,
as an independent woman and an entrepreneur
who, thanks to her art, managed to make her mark
on the international scene.
They say Édith was abandoned by her mother.
Her life wasn’t “La Vie en Rose” at all.
Even if sometimes I allowed myself to be knocked down,
I’d always bounce straight back and say,
“No, I'll get through it, I'll overcome it.”
Her life was a bit like something
out of a Zola novel, starting from nothing.
For years she did busking, singing in the street.
Busking is character building,
which is why she never took herself too seriously.
She remained extremely humble.
The story behind her little black dress,
it's precisely because she didn't want people
to focus on the details of the dress.
Instead, under the spotlight,
she wanted her face and hands,
which she used to great effect by the way,
to be the only things that the audience could see.
Obviously one woman who is
a constant point of reference in my work
is Catherine Dior,
because she was the sister of Christian Dior
and one of his anchors, it seems.
In each of his collections, he would dedicate a dress to her.
Catherine Dior,
there was a 12-year age gap between them,
but she was his favorite little sister.
He was really the protective big brother.
You can sense that she played
a really important role in his life
and that they were very close.
She was born in Granville, like Christian Dior,
and should have had an education
like her older brothers, quite advanced, in Paris.
But finally the Wall Street Crash of 1929 meant that,
in ’34, she had to move to Callian with her father.
The story of Catherine Dior is very unique.
She was a very independent woman
who was a member of the French Resistance.
And who always fought for her independence.
She had one great love in her life,
it was Hervé des Charbonneries,
thanks to whom she became a member
of the French Resistance.
He became the head of the intelligence unit F2
and she became the secretary for that unit.
In 1944 she had a meeting with a woman from her unit
at the Place de la Trocadero,
and in fact two men from the Gestapo
turned up and arrested her.
Catherine defended her convictions to the end.
She wanted to make it through at the end of the war.
She became a flower dealer
and then she started cultivating her own roses,
so Dior had a boundless admiration for her.
His sister was there for the family,
maintaining a connection between him and his father,
as well as a link to real life.
She represented a point of reference, a beacon,
that was unwavering,
with Dior even choosing to name
his first fragrance after her nickname.
“For my dearest with all my tender,
deep and grateful affection, your Tian.”
Édith Piaf, Juliette Gréco, and Catherine Dior
were three women who were very different,
three women who were elegant and independent,
and who certainly had a major influence
on this collection which is also linked
to the heritage codes of Monsieur Dior.
For this collection, Maria Grazia was inspired
by several references in the archives.
Here, we have the “New York” coat
from the Fall-Winter 1950 Haute Couture collection,
which we can see behind us.
Above all, they revisited the scarf collar detail,
which is a collar that can be very enveloping,
framing the face.
Another inspiration was a coat called “Aventure”,
this time from the Spring-Summer 1948 collection,
the “Envol” line, which was characterized by silhouettes,
or jackets in this case, where the volume of fabric
at the back took flight when in movement.
So, revisiting the light, airy mood of that collection.
For the “New York” silhouette
from the Fall-Winter 1953 collection,
Maria Grazia specifically revisited the sleeves,
which we call balloon sleeves,
with this exaggerated roundness at the shoulder
and a tightening of the sleeve on the arm.
And this volume at the shoulder
further accentuates the nipped waist.
Maria Grazia also did her own interpretation
of the “Miss Dior” dress.
It’s a short evening dress in pink taffeta
which is veiled in a tulle that is called Greek tulle
on which different flowers are embroidered, in relief.
For one of the skirts, Maria Grazia asked me
to create a panel with leather flowers,
composed of six varieties that recall Provence.
The designer particularly liked the rose
and the lily of the valley,
because they have a three-dimensionality.
I have to choose them to make my flowers.
Evaluate the size and style.
This one is the petals of a hydrangea,
which Maria Grazia requested.
Each cut-out corresponds to a bronze mold.
These are the work of sculptors.
And now we will press a rose.
There are many more leaves than with the other flowers
because these leaves are so specific.
Each piece is the result of a very small movement.
With the press, they are never all the same.
Maria Grazia Chiuri saw my tiaras
and what I proposed
corresponded to what she had in mind.
It’s really a basic gesture.
You have to split the stem each time
to create varying thicknesses,
depending on what we’re going to create.
I use a technique that is very similar
to silk flower techniques, modeling, weaving.
It’s woven straw, one of the main
raw materials I work with, which I’ve already dyed with tea.
This is a kind of straw lace that was probably created,
made, in the late 19th century or early 20th century.
These are bamboo culm sheaves.
And in fact, the more you smooth it out and heat it,
the more beautiful it becomes.
It immediately catches the light, the sun,
it’s extraordinary.
It’s super exciting to use
a material that’s so basic or humble
as the starting point, and to magnify it.
OK I’m going to, exactly, because what I did today…
And work like this, this is magnificent.
What we like to do is take a traditional base
and integrate all the elements that Maria Grazia asked for,
with this land/sea theme.
This idea, also,
that the piece feels full of life, with volume.
The piece really had to move.
How’s it going with the dress?
So, all of the front part is ready.
All of the stitches have been done.
The bustier stitches?
Yes.
Then after that you’re going to do the French seams?
I’m doing all the French seams first.
Then second to last, the little French seams.
- OK, then you’ll join your… - OK, that sounds fine.
So, I think the metal that is lightly woven
in the fabric makes it easier to break the fabric.
Yes, it's like a metal wire that you twist in all directions
Exactly.
And it reacts according to the way its manipulated.
So, there’s a tulle bustier underneath?
Yes. First, there’s the lining
and then everything is attached to a tulle bustier.
The lining against the fabric and then at the end,
when its flat, you’ll place the bustier.
For this season’s fabrics,
even if they’re based on references in the Dior archives
we have moirés and duchesse fabrics
we applied a new technique
where we mix inox threads in a traditional chine fabric.
For the production process,
we have the warp threads on one side.
Then it’s put on the frame
and woven with the stainless-steel weft.
We have a twisted cotton warp,
with a very high density, and a satin weave with a weft.
This kind of material, in some ways, also allows
one to be able to mold the dress on the body.
So, it's no longer this defined Dior line,
but instead a softer line that changes
according to the person who wears it.
How they want to wear it.
Regarding the prints,
there are a lot of florals in the collection.
The chine technique, is a classic French technique.
It’s a very complex technique which requires double printing.
So, it’s a process that is done manually on silk.
Here we have two pieces that belong
to the “Roseraie” dress from the 1957 collection.
This belt with a somewhat gigantic knot and a "bibi",
the hat that goes with the “Aquarelle” dress.
And for her collection, Maria Grazia took inspiration
from this kind of warp print.
The warp print is a technique used to create a motif
with this effect that’s a bit blurry, a bit striated.
It’s a technique that was developed a long time ago
and which used to be called “chiné à la branche”.
The warp print motifs
were often floral or geometric motifs.
It’s a printing technique
that is often used on silk or taffeta.
We can see flowers on the contours.
And this step that creates these effects
on the contours that are not clear.
As if there is a lag
between the warp and the weft threads.
This fabric can be linked to Brossin de Méré.
It’s a technique that she used a lot,
notably for the fabrics she developed for the House.
Dior used to collaborate a lot
with Andrée Brossin de Méré,
one of the House’s only fabric designers of the 1950s,
the lead textile designer,
so a woman with a strong character
who created some of the most famous Dior fabrics,
notably the butterflies from the Spring-Summer
1951 collection.
She asked Brassaï to take a photo
of the butterfly’s iridescent wing patterns
and the photo was then blown up 25 times
to create the Butterfly motif.
She was very skilled at representing motifs on textiles.
They could be very realistic or completely revisited.
Here we have a fabric swatch
from the dress “Mois de Mai.”
We can see a representation of
bouquets of lily of the valley,
and Maria Grazia was also inspired by this motif
for the prints in her collection.
These same original designs from the archives
that we reinterpreted were also used
by the artist Joana Vasconcelos to create her set.
That rarely happens, but in this instance it did
because she was so fascinated - just as I was fascinated by her -
by the way we developed it, by the process,
because it's like we were running a factory.
And she also has this incredible place
in Lisbon that I had the fortune of visiting.
So, this is the workshop.
Wow. So huge.
We have a view over the different groups working.
This is still in process, but I’ll show you the rest.
What I did was divide it by sections,
so here we do everything that is related to crochet.
This is my uncle.
He works very quietly but he keeps on going,
which is very, very good.
- And here… - Embroidery.
The embroidery teams.
You see, I have all kinds of beads,
I buy them all over the world,
in flea markets, in Egypt, in Marrakech, in, you know…
I’m an artist.
As an artist, I work mainly in the field of sculpture.
Do you have the bag with the golden pieces?
I do small pieces, I do public art pieces.
Golden, my little golden piece.
Come here.
Then there’s another scale, which is the monumental works.
The idea is to work on this thing
between craft and technology.
Yeah.
That’s what you can see here in the Tree of Life.
Wow.
I have kind of a body of language
that I’ve developed through the years.
You combine them and use them
in the work that we are doing.
Great.
I was invited to make a proposal for the Dior show.
Maria Grazia came to see my work.
Right from the start, she said,
“Yes, I absolutely want you to make a Valkyrie.”
I said, “OK, great.”
This was a small Valkyrie in real,
but it worked very nicely.
So, these are the details.
If you see, what’s interesting is that people will go…
Oh, yes.
…and see it underneath.
It could be nice this idea of a full garden, no?
Dior and Maria Grazia chose the fabrics.
A brand like Dior has a memory of fabrics,
and I took a lot of things
from the House’s textile past to highlight…
I think it needs to be pulled down lower.
You’re almost there.
I used a lot of things that featured
in the decor of the houses of our grandmothers,
of our aunts – embroidery, crochet…
But I also took a lot of contemporary elements,
such as sequins, to give a perspective of the future.
Everything that’s there, there and there.
Look at the little red dot.
There is a curve that needs to be moved over there.
In Norwegian mythology, Valkyries are the warrior gods
who fly over the battlefields
and who give life back to the brave warriors.
It’s great, but there’s a seam here that I don’t like very much.
Extend it to the edge.
Wait, wait, we’ll fix it.
In fact, there’s this idea of paying tribute
to people who were courageous in their time
and who made a difference.
And I said, above all
we have to pay tribute to a woman.
Caterina, a cover!
It can be white.
Catherine Dior, she was a true female warrior,
she was a god in a way.
Why is it so twisted?
This one, you poor thing.
And seeing as Catherine Dior liked flowers a lot,
I said to myself, I’m going to make flowers.
I wanted to create this sense of fluidity
through these arms that hang down,
which the models will move around,
with the dresses in fabrics in matching colors.
And there will be this kind of dance
between the works and the models
as they walk beneath it.
That’s what I imagined.
The show’s decor was an idea that was inspired
by these women Valkyries who are so symbolic.
This metaphor is also embodied by the women I chose
who in a way represent more contemporary,
and less mythological, versions of Valkyries.
Women who shaped their own paths
and who lived their lives in full consciousness.