Dior dances into PFW with modern luxury for a #metoo era

The Paris Longchamp Racecourse is a Victorian-era space in the leafy Bois de Boulogne on the outskirts of Paris, frequented over the last century by everyone from Napoleon to Edgar Degas. But yesterday, for creative director of Dior, Maria Grazia Chiuri, it was anything but that.

Throwing away the rulebook, and straying from their usual show location of the Rodin Museum, Dior opened Paris Fashion Week on Monday by transforming the 57 hectare Longchamp racetrack into a pitch-black dance studio to show a SS19 collection concerned with the power in movement and subversive female art. Or as Chiuri put it: “the story comes from inside the body”.

Since Chiruri’s first spring/summer collection for Dior, she’s nodded heavily to contemporary feminist rhetoric. Ranging from critical theory — her SS16 collection bearing the feminist art critic historian Linda Nochlin’s phrase “Why have there been no great women artists?” and Chimamanda Ngochi Ediche’s now prayer-like mantra: “We Should all be Feminists”.

This year, Chiuri continues to present a collection with a moral compass but the slogans are gone. Instead, she’s tapping into a new strain of feminist thought: strength through art and movement. Instead of rallying t-shirts, Chiuri tapped choreographer Sharon Eyal of the LEV Dance company to create a contemporary dance sequence in sync with the catwalking models, full of ravey moves and radical contemporary choreography. “Dance as a liberating act, as an action of the body”, Chiuri said of the collection, “Dance and fashion define the body and, through discipline, teach us to own it”.

“It’s not a question of bodily perfection, but of flexibility of strength of movement” Eyal said of her choreography. Chiuri referenced the hard wearing uniforms of dancers more interested in ease of movement than anything else with tights, flat slippers, dance trousers and button-down shirts.

Unlike Chiuri’s past spring/summer collections, the show was almost completely devoid of colour. Instead nudes, grey, black and white took centre stage in the form of floor length gowns, evening dresses that riffed on Christian Dior’s original New Look silhouette, spiky perspex heels as well as scarves and hats that cover the hair –  these are clothes to be taken seriously in.

Art directed by Bureau BETAK with a soundtrack by Michel Gaubert, the show began with a single dancer moving under a spotlight under thousands of falling rose petals, later joined by seven others, coming together on the catwalk to stalk the models in power moves that were more like signs of clout than delicate ballet pointes.

Accessories also told a story of strength and fluidity. Handbags didn’t restrict movement and were mostly wearable, either on the waist or the back. Chiuri knows how to deliver for the ever-growing social media audience fanatical about streetwear with these pieces, but she isn’t going for quick hits. Chiuri knows her audience. The recent renaissance and reintroduction of the cult noughties classic Dior Saddle bag was revealed recently with a huge social media campaign, a nod to the market, but also the nostalgia for a decade of fashion dominated by the ‘IT’ bag.

Chiuri is one of the first women creative directors to not only allude to the key feminist conversations of our time, but to also take part in them. Her models and Eyal’s dancers were powerful, aggressive and anything but shy. It’s remarkable to see eccentric dance movements and strong female bodies on a catwalk so historically associated with female perfection. In a historic location, Chirui made the space her own, pushing a new narrative of power through fashion to the fore. And she got it right.