Dior Haute Couture FW17

silvester · Jan 23, 2017

Absolutely breathtaking! So transportive. Reminded me of the poem "Kubla Khan" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, or "The Garden of Earthly Delights" and "A Midsummer's Night Dream". So ethereal and light. And truthfully I'm glad she's not changing her identity or aesthetic! She's so romantic, and in the times we're going through, it's lovely to have someone who just transports viewers to someplace romantic, and beautiful, where we can leave our fears, troubles, and worries behind.

averagejoe · Jan 23, 2017

Yoshi1296 said:
GORGEOUS!! I loved this collection! I knew Maria would prove herself with the couture line. I definitely am getting a lot of Dior DNA, along with the structure from Raf and some Galliano vibes too. A strong collection!

Exactly what I thought! I saw some Galliano in there, especially with the return of the theatrical headpieces and the fantasy.

I LOVED the collection. Very fairy-tale like and romantic.

averagejoe · Jan 23, 2017

These are such romantic and feminine takes on the Dior Bar jacket. The Bar jacket looks so soft and pretty.

Yoshi1296 · Jan 23, 2017

averagejoe said:
These are such romantic and feminine takes on the Dior Bar jacket. The Bar jacket looks so soft and pretty.

I agree! It's not as structured which I loved. The pleats look so float and it makes me wanna run my hands through them.

averagejoe · Jan 23, 2017

Review from Vogue.com:

Haute couture’s ability to transport viewers to fantasy environments is all part of the sense of occasion needed to frame the most incredibly crafted clothes for the most incredibly wealthy. For her first Christian Dior couture collection, Maria Grazia Chiuri took them to a garden (albeit a fake garden) maze within a tent within the gardens of the Musée Rodin. You only had to look around to sense that this wasn’t a place of clipped topiary and raked paths, though. Hedges were overgrown, and paths strewn with leaves and moss. It was Chiuri’s way of signaling that she intends to bring some naturalism to the fantasy of couture. “I don’t want to lose the idea of dreaming,” she said, in a preview at Dior headquarters. “But I do want to make it possible for couture to be wearable.”

The green labyrinth was a metaphor, she said, for her own life and career, as she finds her way anew into the workings of a storied Paris house, after her long working life at Valentino in Rome. Some of the spirit was familiar, a melding of her Italian-virginal styling with Dior-isms. Fresh-faced nymphs trod the Dior pathways in low kitten heels and boots, wearing ingenue ball gowns with wispy lingerie straps, and a vast variety of poetically playful garden-referenced headdresses by Stephen Jones.

Chiuri successfully softened the corseted stricture of the Dior New Look—the daunting carapace that faces every designer at this house—by using supple fan pleating to create peplums, volumes in sleeves, and swirls in skirts. Things went in and out where they should for a house that does “feminine” waists. The ankle-grazing ballerina length of the New Look was honored, too, even if that was in wide “Tuxedo” culottes, Chiuri’s answer to masculine-feminine tailoring that opened the show.

How did Dior’s first woman couturier come to these conclusions? A combination of sharp social analysis and instinct. Feeling what women want to wear is partly sisterly divination—the fact that Chiuri placed trees whose branches were hung with pagan votive offerings at the center of the set, and sprinkled sparkling tarot symbols in the layers of tulle skirts, seemed to symbolize that belief. The rest, though, isn’t magic, but understanding the occasions on which women are going to wear the clothes to be seen in. And if they don’t exist so much—well, then create the occasions!

Chiuri researched this history in the Dior archives. In the ’50s heyday of Christian Dior, there were balls that kept couture houses busy for a whole year in advance. “It was an important thing to dress for, and to sell clothes,” said Chiuiri. Tonight, in Paris, she went back to the temporary Christian Dior winter gardens at the Musée Rodin to host a Bal Masqué—a competitive dress-up event for couture clients and fashion-world denizens, and in a way, a meeting of fantasy with commerce.

http://www.vogue.com/fashion-shows/spring-2017-couture/christian-dior

hightea_xx · Jan 23, 2017

Now THIS is what I wanted to see! You can see the reference more strongly here to the Dior shapes and as already mentioned it brings us back a bit to the Galliano era without losing the refined and mordernity that raf introduced during his time as well. This gives me hope if we can bring some of this elegance back to RTW I think we will be back on track!

averagejoe · Jan 23, 2017

Review from Tim Blanks from Business of Fashion:

PARIS, France — Maria Grazia Chiuri has a huge mountain to climb. Not only is she learning the intricacies of one of the grandest French couture ateliers, she doesn’t even speak the language. She’s finding her way through a maze of new challenges. That’s why her first haute couture show for Dior on Monday afternoon revolved around a labyrinth, a huge, leafy, mossy maze with the Tree of Life, strung with fairy lights, at its heart. Beautiful.

Post-show, Chiuri was quite open about her steep learning curve, not simply the language barrier, but also the enormous archive that confronts her. She is well-versed in the work of her predecessors, the tradition of Mr Dior himself and Saint Laurent, the theatre of John Galliano, the modernism of Raf Simons. Speaking for herself, Chiuri said, “I want to live my dream.” To create something magical, aspirational, but still rooted in reality. You could sense all of that in the collection she showed. Some of it worked, some not so. “It’s a huge story,” she acknowledged. “Impossible to know everything in a few months.” And that, realistically, is really all she’s had so far.

But if you were looking for green shoots, they were in the most reassuring places. Chiuri opened with the Bar, the lingua franca of all those who would design for Dior. A black Bar, softly shaped and shown with voluminous culottes, some pleated, had a sensual rigour. Chiuri’s acknowledgment of Mr Dior’s superstitious nature yielded some beautiful astrological and tarot embroideries on taffeta dresses. The midnight silk gown handpainted with a streaking gold comet was an artfully cosmic marriage of Dior and Chiuri.

The signature she created with Pierpaolo Piccioli at Valentino was so particular that it’s inevitable people would look for traces of it in her new gig. With her debut collection for Dior, Spring 2017’s ready-to-wear, Chiuri made a concerted effort to defeat such expectations, but she did it with a head-scratching fencing theme. Mercifully, on Monday, she declared, “It’s impossible to use the same language in pret-a-porter and couture. Pret-a-porter is about time, couture is timeless.”

In her first couture collection, that timelessness drew a line from Valentino’s pale princesses to Dior’s winsome Titianas. How much of a problem that is will hopefully be resolved in the immediate future. Yes, Chiuri wants her dream rooted in reality — and she is quite pragmatic about learning a new culture, in terms of both a new company and a new country — but, with Stephen Jones’s masques de bal, Red Riding’s hoods, stars sparkling on the models’ faces, and Edward Scissorhands on the soundtrack, she is clearly still in love with fairytales.

https://www.businessoffashion.com/a...les-at-dior-haute-couture-maria-grazia-chiuri

OneMoreDay · Jan 23, 2017

From Dior.com.

In the dark we will see clearly, my brothers.
In the labyrinth we will find the right way.
Henri Michaux

The labyrinth; irregular, almost impenetrable, like a secret garden. This is the image that inspired Maria Grazia Chiuri, Artistic Director of the women's collections for the house of Dior, for her first Haute Couture season. Fascinated by the myriad of interpretations to which this archetypal form has given rise over the ages, she perceived her adventure into the heart of the Dior world as being akin to entering a labyrinth, the way sprinkled with the flowers, plants and allegorical images that form part of the iconography of these places but which, at the same time, reference the imagination of Christian Dior who wrote of them: "After women, flowers are the most divine of creations. They are so delicate and charming, but they must be used carefully." The result is evening dresses in changeant and powdery colors (mauve, blue, pink, gray) which evoke the passing of the seasons and of life itself, and whose layers of tulle trap exquisite flowers, like those we preserve in our most prized herbariums. Claude Lalanne, for his part, imagined that the flowers, brambles, and butterflies of costume jewelry landed on bodies ready to spring to life. Memory is the driving force shaping a new story that rewrites the House's lexicon, translating it into shapes and cuts that are the imprint of the silhouettes, dreams and desires of today's women. Lace, for example, is cut out and remounted on organza, and pleated tulles in fairy tale hues are layered in compositions that are both ethereal and majestic. Stephen Jones’ hats and masks bring an aspect of gothic phantasmagoric with a punk edge. Maria Grazia Chiuri embraces the art of divination, transforming it to embellish her creations: embroidered stars stand out against gold-colored tulle, tarot symbols are hand-painted on the white panels of long dresses. This white can be found inside a black coat, and adds a further element to the feminine tuxedo. Reborn in a series of fresh interpretations, this typically masculine evening outfit becomes the defining piece of a contemporary take on femininity. The Bar jacket is deconstructed and reinvented, even as a cape. Pleated, roomy culottes have satin on the side, and the Domino coat an imposing black velvet hood. This voyage is guided by a desire for beauty, where losing oneself is a necessary step to challenging oneself and evolving. And so, for the finale, Maria Grazia Chiuri imagined a splendid ball straight out of a fairy tale. Liberating and unforgettable.