Is it possible to celebrate Haute Couture and at the same time give a critical reading? It is possible to be faithful to the strict rules dictated by the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture - "the original models must be designed by the couturier or his closest full-time collaborators, the clothes are created exclusively in the ateliers ..." - and at the same time disintegrate them to give a new order? These were some of the questions that Maria Grazia Chiuri has posed, after the great exhibition dedicated to Dior at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs has enhanced the creations of couture, making monument that sacred and timeless place that is still the atelier.
Ateliers are places that preserve thoughts. It is in this memory of couture, in this visual sequence of shapes, colors and attitudes that the action of Chiuri breaks out. The couture is a reflection that is activated by cultivating the audacity of repeating codified gestures and at the same time contradicting them. It produces absolute objects that do not need a description. In an abstract and precise sequence at the same time. So in the encounter between systems of rules and unbridled invention, the couture for Chiuri becomes rebellion, a sort of ideological guerrilla that explodes on the boundaries of a consolidated tradition, never crossing them completely.
