ART / THE DIOR EXHIBITION: WHEN FASHION BECOMES ART
After seing this you will understand why Dior is haute couture.
© Adrien Dirand
From this summer till January 2018, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs located in Paris right next to the Louvre hosts a tremendous exhibition (that you must have heard about) of the infamous haute couture brand Dior, and more precisely of its history and evolution. Through 3 thousand square meters and more than 300 dresses made from 1947 to just recently, the evolution and influences of the different stylists of the brand are beautifully portrayed. Among them are, obviously, Christian Dior, but also Yve Saint Laurent, John Galliano, Raf Simons, and just recently Maria Grazia Chiuri.
© Adrien Dirand
Once you get in the exhibition, after a very long line, you are faced with 70 years of Dior fashion: you start with right at the beginning, in 1947, i.e. when everything started, and discover not only the first Dior dresses but shoes, perfumes, and specially drawings and sketches by Christian Dior himself. You also get a background on the stylist's life and understand what shaped and oriented Dior's brand. Nevertheless, having been to the exhibition, I have to admit I found that there were many more than beautiful pieces in the first rooms of the exhibition but that for some of them they were all piled up and it was therefore not always easy to distinguish everything, specially with the amount of people there was.
© Adrien Dirand
The directors of the project, Florence Müller and Olivier Gabet, have made this exhibition a real success with more than 200 thousand visitors. Together they have organized the exhibition in a way that puts forward the artistic dimension of fashion and that shows Christian Dior's relationship with painting and flowers; the stylist said that "After women, flowers are the most divine creatures", and indeed, his dresses do look like beautiful flowers:
It is, once again, a great exhibition, and whether you're a fashion addict, a parisian or a tourist I'd more than recommend seing it.
