DIOR ~ RTW SPRING/SUMMER 2021

Following the rules of the “new normal” the house of Dior presented in Paris at the Jardin des Tuileries their Ready-to-Wear Spring/Summer 2021 collection designed under the artistic direction of Maria Grazia Chiuri.

For her Spring/Summer 2021 RTW collection, Maria Grazia Chiuri paradoxically transforms the Dior silhouette to respect its heritage: the subversive radicality of its origins. Thoughts translate into cuts. Shapes are redefined to spark sensations and infuse them with a different way of living. In this spirit, the structure of the bar jacket transforms in a reinterpretation of selected autumn-winter 1957 Dior silhouettes created for Japan. The addition of laces allows it to be adapted as the wearer wishes. The suit dresses each woman in a unique manner.
Maria Grazia Chiuri draws inspiration from those women who, through their writings, illuminate life and emotion: poets, intellectuals, authors. Members of an idealized academy. In the intimacy of their homes, their places of work, wrapped in infinite layers of color, like virginia woolf, or dressed in a simple white shirt, like Susan Sontag. One of Maria Grazia Chiuri’s essentials, the men’s shirt, is reinvented. By turns, it becomes a tunic or a dress, echoing Dior’s emblematic shirtdress, paired with wide, striped trousers or shorts. It is also worn under ample coats in heathered fabrics. Patchworks of scarves with paisley and floral motifs, embellished with pieces of lace for a romantic collage effect, accessorize a series of dresses and trousers, opening up infinite horizons for the imagination.

These resolutely fluid fabrics envelop, without hardening, each body in a continuous alchemy of techniques and materials: silk chiffon for long dresses in shades of light, matte blue, deep ochre and pale orange; chiffon embellished with beaded embroidery. The waist is accentuated with smocking, or dropped, to oscillate freely with the idea of beauty and complexity simultaneously marked by tradition and by the current context that permeates this collection. In this way, movement finds an echo in the writings of Germano Celant, which resonate today more than ever: “the time has now come for fashion to decipher its latent forces and desires and recognize itself as a free and original discipline**.”