“We should all be feminists”. At the entrance to La Galerie Dior, a giant photograph, commissioned from Brigitte Niedermair, of the famous t-shirt printed with the slogan of the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, created in 2016 by Maria Grazia Chiuri for her first collection for Dior, welcomes visitors. “This is the manifesto of our new exhibition, which explores the links between Dior and women artists,” explains Olivier Flaviano, the director of the private museum, which has welcomed 700,000 people since its inauguration in March 2022.
Located in the heart of the historic address of the house, at 30, avenue Montaigne, in the 8e district of Paris, the place is offering its fourth temporary display until May 13. “With this theme, we wish to show how the fashion object constitutes a cultural, social, economic, but also civilizational subject. Fashion, a reflection of the movements of its time, reveals the questions of our societies. »
The thirteen thematic rooms, devoted to the world of gardens, to appearance, to the ball or even to the 18the century, have been reorganized to highlight the creations of female artists close to the house. If Maria Grazia Chiuri is known for her commitment to women photographers, illustrators, sculptors and visual artists, Olivier Flaviano had to delve, with his team, into the older history of the house, to find traces of the women who collaborated with she or nourished her creations.
The final table is not exhaustive, choices had to be made. In the first space dedicated to Monsieur Dior, we discover an oil painting by the surrealist artist Leonor Fini (Christian Dior, then a gallery owner, exhibited it for the first time in 1932), a sketch of the couturier produced by the painter Nora Auric, dresses created for Madeleine, her mother, Catherine, her sister, and a photo of the designer surrounded by his “high-class staff”, his faithful collaborators.
Many winks
The Niki de Saint Phalle room, newly created for the occasion, is worth the detour alone. The visual artist was dressed by Marc Bohan (artistic director of Dior from 1961 to 1989), also a great collector of her Nanas, bas-reliefs and screen prints. Here, the treasure hunt became more complex: we had to get our hands on some of her works that belonged to the designer (identified from a photo of her studio), but also on models created for her by Marc Bohan .
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