{"id":1031,"date":"2019-04-15T23:10:18","date_gmt":"2019-04-15T23:10:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tcls.hosteggandbrush.co.uk\/wp\/?p=1031"},"modified":"2019-05-08T09:29:17","modified_gmt":"2019-05-08T09:29:17","slug":"christian-dior-designer-of-dreams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tcls.hosteggandbrush.co.uk\/wp\/christian-dior-designer-of-dreams\/","title":{"rendered":"Christian Dior – Designer of Dreams"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\u2018Christian Dior – Designer of Dreams\u2019 exhibits at the V&A museum until September 2019, staged in the new subterranean Sainsbury gallery where you feel as if you are exhuming from the fashion archive. <\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Following on from the Parisian exhibition at the Mus\u00e9e des Arts D\u00e9coratifs, the retrospective celebrates 70 years of the fashion house. The exhibition opens with the iconic bar suit; a design which established the so-called New Look<\/em> in the 1950\u2019s and sets the tone for the rest of the exhibition with the quintessential Dior silhouette. It has a black full pleated skirt and cream suit jacket with an impossibly tiny waistline. In fact, one of the main takeaways from this exhibition is the sense of astonishment at the extremely petite waist circumferences and the women who wore them. Christian Dior described designing such silhouettes as \u201cephemeral architecture\u201d. However, in post-war austerity, the couturier caused outrage. In Chicago 1947, women led protests against Dior designs and the suppression of women\u2019s bodies which is only slightly touched on.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Curated by Oriole Cullen, the setting of the exhibition is incredibly immersive. Cullen has recreated the architecture of a Parisian street fa\u00e7ade, just like the one that Dior grew up on. In the \u2018historicism\u2019 themed room, the dresses are displayed in an architectural rotunda in a French 18thc countryside scene. In the \u2018garden\u2019 themed room, there is a stunning ceiling display of cut out paper flowers which cascade down over your head. These kind of ethereal settings reinforce couture as luxury escapism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the main attractions of the exhibition is Princess Margaret\u2019s 21st<\/sup> birthday dress. Once again, the dress is astonishingly petite. The colour of the dress is a lot warmer with gold details compared to Cecil Beaton\u2019s famous photographs of Margaret in the bright white dress where he bleached out the photograph for what he felt was more regal look. The \u2018Dior in Britain\u2019 section was added for the UK V&A exhibition and was an interesting dimension that characterised Christian Dior as an anglophile. Throughout his career, Dior maintained close ties with the royal family dressing them and showing his designs at Blenheim palace and the Savoy Hotel. Dior expressed his adoration for all things British, yet we can expect this characterisation was just as much a business conscious decision. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In celebrating the lifetime of the house, the show encompasses designs from all its creative directors. One of the main successes of this exhibition is its ability to integrate (almost) seamlessly the old and new pieces. Galliano\u2019s work is the exception to this; his pieces stick out significantly with their outlandish designs which stray so far from the typical Dior aesthetic. The show presents a timeline of each creative director\u2019s vision of the house over the last 70 years. John Galliano\u2019s anti-Semitic abuse scandal which saw him being fired from the house is neatly omitted. However, the current director Maria Grazia Chiuri\u2019s pieces are a welcome progression. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are some aspects of Dior\u2019s vision that are problematic today. For example the \u2018travel\u2019 section where bold colour and design is explored to exoticise other cultures and also raises the discussion of cultural appreciation and appropriation. The creative directors have been inspired by Japan, Mexico, India, China and Egypt; however, this isn\u2019t always explored in a tasteful way particularly when Galliano used the prop of a giant head of an ancient Egyptian god on the catwalk which is displayed in this section. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the biggest exhibit of Dior in the UK so far; however, the overall exhibition misses the punchiness that you get in the final room of the exhibition.\u00a0The \u2018Dior\u00a0ballroom\u2019\u00a0is by far the\u00a0pinnacle\u00a0of the show, where you feel like you could spend a long time watching the room transform. Dresses rotate on platforms\u00a0that have been worn by celebrities and royalty\u00a0to mention a few Jennifer Lawrence, Charlize Theron, Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Lupita Nyong\u2019o\u00a0and Princess Diana.\u00a0A light and music display lasts for 7 minutes, transforming the ceiling and chandeliers from a sunny day into a night sky covered in shooting stars and a cascade of glitter. This room embodies the fairy-tale opulence of Dior\u2019s imagination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2015 Alexander McQueen exhibition \u2018Savage Beauty\u2019 set the tone for the V&A\u2019s fashion exhibitions in terms of scale and theatricality and it is hard to resist the comparison of their curation. However, we must resist this comparison of content between these two antithetical designers. McQueen\u2019s creative genius and dark side inspired exhilaration and repulsion with his designs. It is almost impossible to inspire the same emotional drama. On the other hand, Dior embodies romance, fairy-tale and femininity. The V&A exceeds in its realisation of artistic vision in its evocative settings and the end result is a completely beautiful presentation of the Dior house which exists in its own fantasy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Want to join The Collective, and contribute to the debate?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Email us at: The.Collective@lewissilkin.com<\/strong><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018Christian Dior – Designer of Dreams\u2019 exhibits at the V&A museum until September 2019, staged in the new subterranean Sainsbury gallery where you feel as if you are exhuming from the fashion archive. Following on from the Parisian exhibition at the Mus\u00e9e des Arts D\u00e9coratifs, the retrospective celebrates 70 years of the fashion house. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1157,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[51],"tags":[59],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tcls.hosteggandbrush.co.uk\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Dior-exhibition-600x720_2.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tcls.hosteggandbrush.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1031"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tcls.hosteggandbrush.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tcls.hosteggandbrush.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tcls.hosteggandbrush.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tcls.hosteggandbrush.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1031"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/tcls.hosteggandbrush.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1031\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1237,"href":"https:\/\/tcls.hosteggandbrush.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1031\/revisions\/1237"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tcls.hosteggandbrush.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tcls.hosteggandbrush.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tcls.hosteggandbrush.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tcls.hosteggandbrush.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}