Maria Grazia Chiuri's Spring 2021 Dior Show Is A Quasi-Religious Experience

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Fashion media expressed a variety of generally positive responses to Christian Dior Creative Director Maria Grazia Chiuri’s Spring/Summer 2021 presentation. The event was produced by Alexandre de Betak, with styling by Elin Svahn and garnered an estimated 95 million live views online.

The model cast was massive in a show that for me was very ritualistic. Some fashion writers focus primarily on the clothes, while other focus on the message. Clearly Chiuri’s objective is to fuse both the functional and the intellectual into one cohesive design story.

Dior’s visionary has long sought to unite “the desirable with the wearable long before lockdown set it”, wrote Vogue. And she admitted (see Chiuri’s video later in the post about the references, influences and lifestyle trends evident in the clothes.) that her mission has intensified.

“We had to approach this collection with an idea more of design. We are living in a different way and staying more at home within our intimacy. Our clothes have to reflect this new style of life.”

The Fight to Liberate Women’s Bodies Continues

Chiuri’s Dior assignment was to create a New Look that resonates with the times. “This is very far from the Dior look, because Dior was a couture house. The idea of construction was really stiff,” Chiuri acknowledged. “The most important issue for me was to realize the new Dior silhouette: the jacket with the shirt and the pants. I think that is what really represents the feeling of the moment. I cross my fingers.”

“For a long time, there was a moment in fashion when clothes had to have a dialogue with other people, to express your opinion to other people. At this moment in time, I think it’s more about a personal relationship with ourselves,” Chiuri reflected. “You want to take care of yourself. I feel that, so I think other people need that feeling too.”

If body liberation was the goal, and expressed in shirts that elongated into tunics, trousers that became fluid and billowing, dressing gowns, kimono-style jackets, and dusters — those clothes were a step back into the North African influences and silhouettes that permeate Mediterranean culture. Chiuri delves into women’s history in these arts-driven exploration, with stops in the 60s to dialogue with functionalist designer Nanni Strada, whose approach to comfortable clothes was rooted in the wave of feminism sweeping Italy over the decade. A reinterpretation of 1957 Dior silhouettes created for Japan were sprinkled throughout the collection.

It was the work of artist Lucia Marcucci, creator of woman-centric collages that played with 60s’ media images of women often in deep contrast with the voices of women-in-the-streets demands for liberation. Chiuri asked the director Alina Marazzi to make a film about Marcucci’s collages. The film played online before the show, with the collages now juxtaposed as stained glass windows.

I doubt that Chiuri considered at all the influence of the Vatican on US president Donald J. Trump’s appointment and swearing in tonight of Amy Coney Barrett to the US Supreme Court. Barrett is the Republican’s answer to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg — replacing the most influential women’s rights judicial advocate in history with one who not only promises to overturn abortion rights in America, but plays cagey on a women’s right to birth control.

During her confirmation hearings, Barrett refused to consider Griswold v. Connecticut — the foundation of most right to privacy legal arguments in America — as settled law. Griswold was specifically about family planning and birth control, but impacted rights to gay sex, gay marriage and countless other ‘freedoms’ Republicans — in concert with the Vatican and Evangelicals — want to put on the chopping block.

The Ritual

Alexandre de Betak just outdid himself in the show’s production. The spirit of the clothes lay deeply in the art and music — or the wailing of female voices. Images of the clothes do not convey the experience of the event.

As ELLE wrote: “Dior Took Us To Church For It Spring Runway. In contrast to Vogue’s more restrained review of the show, ELLE’s chosen quotes from Chiuri’s overview stress urgency and dramatic change.

“We are traversing a period of crisis that is radically transforming behaviors, habits and rituals,” explained the press release. “Our spirits have changes, as have our bodily attitudes. The concept of fashion as we know it has been put into question.”

Behind the Spring-Summer 2021 choral performance

The all-female chamber choir often sounded like wailing women, filled with angst in our COVID-drenched world The funeral-like sounds reflected the solemn nature of the year forever remembered as 2020, a year that took innocent lives across the world, in the same moment Trump upended global institutions and liberal democracy alliances, riding a wave of white nationalism in the US and a resurgence of authoritarian rule in a world of billionaires.

The church is both a source of comfort but also concern, as cathedrals easily inspire devotion to authoritarian rule, purity tests and a loss of liberal freedoms among people.

In this making of video, composer Lucia Ronchetti discusses what her work involves and how she collaborates with her interpreter and choir director, Catherine Simonpietri, to bring her pieces to life. One of her latest creations, Sangu di rosa, served as the live soundtrack for the House’s recently presented Spring-Summer 2021 show by Maria Grazia Chiuri, using Corsican texts from a popular tradition that likely dates back to the Middle Ages.“The vocero are lamentations, they are the anger, and all the lamentations of the woman on this majestic island. You have crying, mourning women, angry women, women who lull their children to sleep,” explains Ronchetti of the powerful piece.

We don’t often speak of Maria Grazia Chiuri as the intellectual she clearly is. I cannot think of another designer who has done more to not only advance the story of women’s real history — and not that of men who have perfected us through fashion. Better yet is Chiuri’s commitment to use women’s artistic talents to create the visual and audio landscape — the atmosphere and narrative — to communicate these truths live to an audience of 95 million views at the same time.

Within this context, Christian Dior may have become the world’s biggest televangelist for women as we envision ourselves on the planet. Who says fashion has few redeeming qualities? Not Anne of Carversville. ~ Anne