The mix ‘n’ match patchwork theme that we saw at Tsumori Chisato continues apace at Christian Dior Fall 2018. The detail is finer and there’s stitch added to hold it all together and embroidered text too to get key Peace and Love messages across.
Creative Director, Maria Grazia Chiuri, gives us another culturally-attuned show with women’s empowerment centre stage.
She attributes her inspiration to the sixties’ Youthquake and rising social emancipation encapsulated around the May 1968 Paris riots. We would go a step further and say that elements of this show convey the complexity of women’s freedom in 2018. For instance, the detailed patchwork fabrics (pictured) that cover dresses, trousers, bags and boots convey a metaphoric fragmentation of Self ‘worn on the sleeve.’
In these dark days of abuser deflection and projection in the highest cultural and historic institutions, victims of denied sexual abuse and harassment are having to ‘pull together’ their shattered selves and re-integrate the very fabric of themselves. This is the symbolic power of fashion and the cultural message that intellectual designers such as Maria Grazia Chiuri are able to expose, consciously or not, through their collections, soundtracks and mise-en-scenes: the metaphoric, material expressions of contemporary culture with a distinctly female authorship.
Join us in reflecting on this further, whilst creating your own textile banner at Textiles Hub London, in one of our workshops that famously integrate the practical, sustainable, material and immaterial:
Dior-inspired Patchwork Banner Workshop on Saturday 27th October 2018, 14:30 – 17:00.