The atelier – where head and hands work in concert – is both an instrument and a place of experimentation; a living organ where savoir-faire and savoir-être meet and evolve, in the course of a collaboration that constantly reaffirms the magical and scientific language that is haute couture.
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This is the emblem of the Dior spring-summer 2022 Haute Couture Collection, designed by Maria Grazia Chiuri, through which the Creative Director of Dior’s women’s collections honors human relationships with handmade objects, expressing a desire to abolish the boundaries between art and craft once and for all. The body is thus a vector for breathing life into avant-garde projects.
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Embroidery becomes a three-dimensional conceptual act that reinvents the atelier’s techniques and elemental excellence; it progresses through a choreography of movements and is not merely a decorative detail. It gives fabric its structure, its architecture. The embroidery, which stands out from – and interacts with – the material, rendering it evanescent and prompting an interplay with the surrounding air, as seen in the contrasting of a long, all-over embroidered ecru skirt with a sheer silk organza shirt.
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The tights, a signature of the collection, also derive their spectacular dimension from embroidery to establish a lively dialogue with different pieces, from a grisaille-bedecked grey suit to evening dresses that marry the finesse of embroidery with the lightness of tulle, through a series of draped leotards.
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Here is Maria Grazia Chiuri reasserting the syntax and grammar of the atelier, the purity of lines fundamentally celebrating the very role, the essence of couture: to dress the body.
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Elsewhere, cashmere coats embrace the silhouette and sleek capes in resplendent white conceal jacket-and-pant ensembles. Pleated skirts billow under structured coats, while the silver lamé jacquard fabrics of dresses highlight each movement of the body
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These embroidered patterns, through which Dior’s heritage is reinterpreted, become the central element, and, following the rules of couture, are transformed by a vision that makes the atelier a collaborative mode of expression, where haute couture is a form of constant experimentation and questioning.
