“You can't do this job without having a certain real, emotional and physical involvement,” Maria Grazia Chiuri tells her interviewer, sitting quietly on a patio as she reminisces about the last near-decade as creative director of Dior’s womenswear and Haute Couture. After that position had been held exclusively by men for seven decades, in 2016 the path opened up for the Italian designer, bringing with it many more. Her Dior is a documentary directed by Loïc Prigent, the French fashion journalist and director best known to us all as ‘the hilarious backstage youtuber.’
This work takes us on a retrospective journey through the creative director’s collaborations with painters, photographers, writers, thinkers, and other artists since she took up her position at Dior, one that she has used since her first collection to position herself politically and radically in favour of women. That very first collection was her declaration of intent. She made her debut by raising a stir with T-shirts that read ‘We should all be feminists,’ a reference to the famous TED Talk and subsequent book by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. At the time when this collection came out (pre #MeToo), this conversation was not part of the mainstream, and even less so in the fashion world. That statement in the form of a T-shirt was not a ploy to gain attention, but an announcement of what was to come.
Since then, collection after collection, Maria Grazia Chiuri has extended the hand that Dior provides to female collaborators to take over the space. As Eva Jospin, the visual artist whose installation in the historic Orangery Silk Room was commissioned by Dior in 2021 for the Fall/Winter show, says, “These collaborations are meaningful because they give artists the means to execute a dream.” Fashion has grown up in the male dream and is steeped in it. Maria Grazia, now that it’s her turn, prioritises the female gaze, not only through her eyes: “I can't do it alone. I need female artists, photographers, and different voices that we can create together a new point of view for the future.”
Every runway is a moment to come together, to engage in conversation, to learn, to uplift. Robin Morgan is one of the most important names in the feminist movement who, thanks to Maria Grazia, has contributed to the history of Dior. “My name as a long-standing radical feminist is not normally linked to haute couture,” she says in the documentary. Author of the anthology Sisterhood Is Global, a slogan used by Dior on a collection of T-shirts in 2019, she explains that “Sisterhood is what happens when women realise that this is about me as a woman and, for that matter, about me as a man. When that involvement happens at that visceral level of passion, there’s no turning back.”
Another prominent name is the American feminist art pioneer Judy Chicago. In 2020, she created a monumental work, normally reserved for the male sector, inspired by a Palaeolithic representation of a female deity in the form of a figurine. The Female Divine was erected seventy-six metres long in the garden of the Rodin Museum in Paris to host the Spring/Summer 2020 Haute Couture show, which was to be accessed by entering through the deity’s vagina. It was flanked by hanging banners with hand-embroidered questions reflecting on how society might be different if women were the political and spiritual leaders of humanity. Chicago, when asked about the process of collaborating with the house, notes: “Thanks to Maria Grazia’s work, I have realised that fashion is not inherently oppressive to women. In fact, it can empower them. What has been oppressive has been the male gaze.”
Maria Grazia Chiuri’s fashion shows are also opportunities to provoke. On 20 February 2020, the last day of Harvey Weinstein’s trial for sexual abuse, the Fall/Winter show took place in an installation designed by Claire Fontaine. The models walked through the space under neon light signs with messages such as ‘patriarchy kills love’ or ‘consent.’ Years later, in 2024, she brought the second collaboration between them to New York. This one was born out of Claire Foontaine’s conversation with Suzanne Santoro, author of the controversial and censored book Towards a New Expression, in which she explores the lack of representation and anatomical knowledge about the female sex. They covered the space with neon figures of the feminist gesture, a form of joining both hands that simulates female genitalia and was widely used during the protests of the 1970s. Santoro remarks on the irony of her book being seen as seductive: “It’s seductive from a male point of view, but not from mine. Men have always painted women. Because that's seduction, but that's not what art is about.”
The impact of Dior’s commitment to women that came with Maria Grazia transcends the ideological and artistic. Chanakya School of Craft is an institution in India dedicated to preserving and promoting traditional craft and embroidery techniques, while offering training and providing trades and tools to women in vulnerable situations. Dior has sponsored the school since 2017 and, under the direction of Karishma Swali, the Chanakya School of Craft has worked on several Dior collections, fusing luxury with Indian craftsmanship. The Maison took its Fall 2023 runway show to Mumbai, where it paid tribute to the country’s beautiful textile tradition and the master craftsmanship of the school’s women.
Thus, one by one, the documentary explains the different initiatives that have changed the perspective of the Maison so much through the personal points of view and motivations of Maria Grazia and each of the artists. She has chosen her allies well (and has allied herself on many occasions). They are names to be mentioned, but so many that it is impossible to comment one by one: Tomaso Binga, Penny Slinger, Silvia Giambrone, Faith Ringgold, Sharon Eyal, Anna Paparatti, Mariella Bettineschi, Mickalene Thomas, Joana Vasconcelos, Elina Chauvet, Isabella Ducrot, SAGG Napoli, Brigitte Niedermair, and Brigitte Lacombe have also participated.
Beyond being a retrospective, Her Dior is an important wake-up call to revisit the history of art and fashion, with its lack of inclusion and female representation. With her daughter, Rachele Regini, at her side as cultural advisor, together they explore how to incorporate the feminist ideas they share into the collections and propose a change of perspective: fashion can help women feel better about themselves by giving them the tools to represent themselves.
Although Monsieur Dior could perhaps not be considered a feminist (in his time, no one could, at least seen with today’s moral lens), the Maison has worked with feminine sensuality as a way of reconnecting with one’s own body. After the Second World War, when women dressed in functional ways similar to men, Dior sought to restore a femininity that had been forgotten. Today the conversation is different: fashion must dialogue with women, understand how we want to express ourselves and not impose a single vision of femininity. In the words of Rachele Regini: “Fashion has lost its value as a simple item of clothing; we are no longer interested only in whether it is trendy or if it looks good, but in the message it conveys.”
Maria Grazia Chiuri’s approach to fashion will always be feminist, something she made very clear to her superiors before accepting her position. A dilemma for women in the feminist movement is whether they should renounce their ‘femininity’, interests such as fashion, make-up or style. As if strength cannot coexist with softness, as if consciousness cannot coexist with self-expression. Of course, feminism is not an aesthetic, but it is crucial that fashion, as it moves into the future, can allow women to find themselves fully within it and on their own terms, never subject to anyone else. Her Dior reminds us that fashion is a political act, a reflection of the times and, above all, a powerful ally for social and cultural change.
