When Maria Grazia Chiuri decided to create a Christian Dior cruise collection devoted to pan-African wax fabrics and show it on North African soil, in Marrakech, there was no room for mistakes. In the age of social media, cultural appropriation isn’t something you want to mess with. But that wasn’t going to stop Chiuri from using her mighty platform to make the cross-cultural statement she believes in. “A global brand like Dior, which has such an important history, has to move into the future through different points of view and different visions,” she said in a preview in Marrakech on Sunday.
“This is a collection but it’s also a conversation with artists about the representation of women, what it means to work in fashion, and what cultural appropriation means today. It’s an intellectual reflection on fashion today.” Taking inspiration mainly from the wax print fabrics that exist across the countries of the African continent, Chiuri approached the French anthropologist Anne Grosfilley to facilitate a collaboration with Uniwax, an Ivory Coast manufacturer of the highly intricate – and very exclusive – materials.
Her idea was to celebrate pan-African craftsmanship by employing African-made fabrics in the collection, and reflect her belief in cultural exchange and common ground between women all over the globe in the process. “The collection speaks a lot about craftsmanship travelling around the world. In this moment, there’s a lot of attention to cultural appropriation, but I think we have to explain how craftsmanship travels around the world; why it’s often so difficult to find the ‘real’ reference. Wax started in Europe and moved through Asia, then back to Africa. It’s a technique that really went around the world.” For Chiuri, the collection’s nature of exchange didn’t stop at fabric sourcing. She approached two of her favourite artists to collaborate on the collection: the British-Jamaican designer Grace Wales Bonner and the African-American artist Mickalene Thomas. Each would contribute with a cultural background and an eye entirely different to Chiuri’s Roman-Parisian, ultimately European point of view and give the collection a cross-cultural authenticity that could only be created through creative interaction.
“When I interpreted the New Look, which for me is something very French, I gave it lightness, which is probably my Italian background,” she said, reflecting on her first collections for Dior. “So, I decided I would like to evolve it further, and collaborate with these artists. They both work with the representation of women, so I asked them to give their points of view on the iconic New Look.”
Mickalene Thomas, whose work strives to change the values of French impressionism by inserting women of colour into existing paintings, adapted a Monet painting into her Bar Jacket and paired it with an iridescent skirt. For Grace Wales Bonner, whose collections have explored black identities through history, the collaboration was an opportunity to advance the craftsmanship that’s already intrinsic to her eponymous work. “I spent some time at the archive looking at early Dior creations, which were mesmerising and evocative. I wanted to use this as an opportunity to work with techniques which I don’t necessarily have access to,” she said after arriving at the temporary Dior studio at El Badi Palace on Sunday.
“Maria Grazia attended my exhibition A Time for New Dreams at the Serpentine Gallery and was interested in my exploration of connections to mysticism and spirituality and ritual across the black Atlantic. She wanted to meet me in Paris, and we decided to work together on the project then.” The result was a Bar Jacket adorned in embellishment native to the Caribbean cultures close to the designer’s heart, and a highly graphic patterned New Look skirt. “It’s an iconic silhouette that blends masculine and feminine codes harmoniously,” Wales Bonner said of the Dior classic. “My approach was about where the history of the house and my approach as a designer could overlap.”
Asked if it wasn’t unusual for a creative director to invite other designers on board, Chiuri laughed. “I’m just saying, ‘Give your point of view on these codes’. I’m not losing anything! This idea of the designer working alone is stereotypical and old-fashioned. I may be the director but I have a team. Through my career I’ve worked this way. At Fendi, all the sisters were creative directors. It was a team work. At Valentino I worked as part of a team. It’s my life experience,” she said. “Even when I wasn’t creative director, I’ve always been given the opportunity to express myself.”
