Maria Grazia Chiuri Takes The Road To Surrealism With Dior's SS'18 Couture Show

There’s no right answer about how to approach a heritage brand in 2017 – look at the archives or don’t, acknowledge your predecessors or ignore them. For all the effort and expense that go into creating fashion spectacles, the true wonder is how much enchantment can be created by the simplest of means. What’s required are clothes with a heart and soul, something to get the blood pumping.

Dior SS'18 Haute Couture

The walls of Dior’s expansive tent in the gardens of the Musée Rodin were swathed in muslin, atop a black-and-white checkerboard floor. Huge white body-part sculptures – torso, eye, ear – hung from the distressed mirror ceiling, all telegraphing the Surrealist inspiration behind Maria Grazia Chiuri’s SS’18 haute couture collection for the house. After having a big support system behind her, her Surrealist creations took shape in the form of beautifully made haute couture gowns. The designer was inspired by Leonor Fini, an artist who staged her first solo exhibition in the art gallery that Christian Dior ran in the 1930s before he turned to fashion. So she sent out a collection largely in black and white that consisted of narrow-shoulder princess coats sprinkled with polka dots and a trail of white feather butterflies tracing their way down a halter-neck frock.

Dior SS'18 Haute Couture

There was a delicate cloudy ecru chiffon dress with long sleeves and smocking on the shoulder, followed by a black-and-white curved optical gown – with black gloves for shoulder straps. The designer then reinterpreted their graphic structures in cage dresses from Monsieur Dior’s day, repeated in a mink cage shape, and velvet dresses covered in loops crafted individually by hand. A dress made up of thousands of beaded eyes took 1,700 hours to make, every eye hand-stitched by the atelier’s petite mains. A cape encrusted with white feathers and flowers had the requisite extravagance. A gown cut from lace featured an eye motif; a dress with pleats that was in fact an illusion, etched on rather than creased; stripes that appeared to change the direction of grand gowns. Driving home the Surrealist message: Stephen Jones’ fanciful, provocative hats. There was some pretty fantastic intricate detailing too: from faultlessly executed guipure lace column dresses, spirals of pleated tulle ruffles to impeccably tailored white silk Bar jackets with matching pristine trousers.

Dior SS'18 Haute Couture

In a real life twist that bordered the surreal, Maria Grazia Chiuri fell down the stairs at her home in Rome and broke her femur. Stephen Jones broke his shoulder and his left arm. Sources say, both of them are looking for three months of rehabilitation. But the show must go on! The finale scored with Bittersweet Symphony was a reminder that ultimately, fashion is at its most winning when it breaks the law, rather than obey it; when it doesn’t just precede but overturns it. When, for example, Christian Dior flew in the face of wartime rationing and created the New Look with its indulgent extremes of fabric; Yves Saint Laurent put women in tuxedos and Rei Kawakubo challenged the very basis of beauty. That did happen here. Now, until next season…

Watch the full show here - 

All images are courtesy: IMAXTREE