A journey through Dior’s Château de Tarot

With a Star who paints the heavens, a cackling Fool and a seductive Devil, Maria Grazia Chiuri invites viewers on a fantastical journey through the tarot in Dior’s 2021 Haute Couture collection. The tarot deck, a tool used for deep introspection and intuitive grounding, seems an especially potent theme for times such as these, and this collection’s fantastical pieces and enchanting accompanying short film explore the journey that the soul embarks on when one simply picks up a deck of cards. Through rich textiles, ethereal silhouettes, and fantastical styling, Dior enlivens the tarot to create a beautiful escape available to all those who are willing to journey into the unknown.

The House of Dior possesses a history with the tarot, as Christian Dior himself was often described as a superstitious man who would not show a collection without receiving a tarot reading prior. Maria Grazia Chiuri has taken up Monsieur Dior’s devotion to tarot in several of her collections, including her debut in 2016 (which included embroidery of the cards on her signature tulle dresses) and the Resort 2018 collection’s Motherpeace-inspired designs (a deck which revolutionised the use of tarot through a non-linear, particularly feminist lens). With these designs, Chiuri has alchemised the brand’s tarot legacy into a modern interpretation of Christian Dior’s divination fascination. Tarot reading itself has transformed from its novel fortune-telling iteration in Dior’s time, to an intuitive tool used by modern readers to delve deep within the soul through the archetypes shown on the cards, and Chiuri is working to capture that.

The 2021 Haute Couture collection was inspired specifically by the Visconti-Sforza tarot deck, the world’s oldest existing tarot deck from fifteenth-century Italy (which likely influenced Italian-born Chiuri’s decision in using it as the sole reference point for the collection). These early tarot decks were created as playing cards for the noble elite (their use as a divination tool came centuries later), and this particular deck was produced for the Visconti and Sforza families in medieval Milan.

Fully embracing brocades and Renaissance silhouettes, the collection offers gowns, capes, and suiting fit for royalty. While the collection does not attempt to recreate the Visconti-Sforza costuming directly, certain figures, like La Papesse (The High Priestess) and Le Pendu (The Hanged One) closely resemble the appearance of the figures on their corresponding medieval cards. This collection is void of the child-like embroidery of collections past—instead, the looks are characterised largely in the styling of these pieces, and their goal seems to be to evoke the noble, almost divine roots of these archetypes in their earliest form. Through dreamy but sophisticated pieces, the Dior collection shows the tarot all-grown-up.

These designs especially come alive in the accompanying short film released for the collection, directed by Matteo Garrone. The film follows a young woman as she navigates through a Tuscan castle, called Le Château de Tarot, “which represents an inner trip” according to Garrone.

Our protagonist enters Le Château by way of La Papesse, better known today as the High Priestess, who offers in her outstretched hand the key of intuition. It is fitting that the High Priestess is the first archetype she meets, as this figure is the holder of the inner world, representing the soul’s deep connection with the subconscious. The High Priestess signals that the girl’s dream world is opening before her and this world will soon take her on a winding journey of self-discovery. The protagonist is then greeted by several of the tarot’s Major Arcana figures, including The Fool, Justice, and The Devil, who seduces her, unlocking her sexuality.

Simultaneously, the film follows the protagonist’s “masculine” side, who meets The Star and The Hanged One, as each “side” of the protagonist unlocks the secrets of the tarot. Ultimately, the two join together as The Lovers, rebirthed with the help of Death (who is dressed in a stunning blue gown and skeleton-like accessories), embracing one another as a single, whole soul. It is this balance, this integration, that has made the tarot so attractive to modern audiences. 

Throughout the journey of our lives, we learn the lessons of the tarot—mystery in The Moon, rebirth in Death, courage in Strength—and when we are able to embody all of these ideas, we possess a full life, indeed. No shadow is too dark, or truth too bright for those who read the tarot, and the Dior 2021 Haute Couture collection celebrates just that.

You can watch the full film by Matteo Garrone below: