Rising star Maty Fall Diba is styled by Jessica Diehl in ‘Impressions of Puglia’, a dreamy and reverenced look at Dior’s Cruise 2021 Campaign. Photographer Arianna Lago (IG) captures the head-to-toe beauty of the rising IMG star both closed out Dior’s Cruise 2021 show in Puglia — and sparked a racial identity debate in Italy just by being Maty.

Today December 2, 2020 is International Day for the Abolition of Slavery

I adore Maty Fall (Diba) and Dior’s creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri, who is one of my favorite women on the planet. Compelled today to address International Day for the Abolition of Slavery, I just Googled for the connection between glorious Puglia and slavery.

To stay current, rather than becoming bogged down in the centuries old history of slavery in Puglia, let’s focus on modern-day slavery. How is it defined? In June 2019, The Guardian took us to Chiuri’s beloved Puglia to ask Are your tinned tomatoes picked by slave labour?

So as not to disrupt an exquisite set of Dior Cruise 2021 images by Arianna Lago, I will address this subject of slave labor in Puglia in a new post — starting with the admission that no one I know loves Italian tinned tomatoes more than I do.

One of my greatest learnings in recent years concerns the duality of life. Two seemingly oppositional realities can be true at the same time. Often they live on the same continuum — which is the simultaneous reality of Puglia’s traditional artisan handwork contributions to the Dior 2021 Cruise collection and my passion for all things Italian, including tinned tomatoes. ~ Anne