Dior Celebrates 10 Years of Lady Dior Art With a Retrospective Book

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Lady Dior Art, the French maison welcomes a fresh roster of renowned collaborators and unveils a retrospective book.

Before Christian Dior devoted himself to fashion, he first fell in love with architecture. He grew up in a home “rendered in a very soft pink, combined with gray gravel, and these two shades have remained my favorite colors in couture,” he writes in his 1958 autobiography Dior by Dior. “I dreamed of a residence like those houses in the country, where they brought me to visit older family members and for which I have tender memories. Possibly I am merely giving in to an avowed taste for interior decoration and architecture, my first vocation.”

Perhaps this is why it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that his debut collection, presented on February 12, 1947, translated to clothing an acute taste for fine design. As a sartorial architect, Dior revolutionized the post-World War II French fashion industry with the New Look silhouette, characterized by rounded shoulders, nipped waists, and voluminous skirts.

Decades later, his legacy as one of the world’s most seasoned couturiers continues to be propelled by the multiplicities of his character. In 2016, the maison introduced the Dior Lady Art project, inviting renowned artists from all over the world to envision, in their own ways, one of the house’s most recognizable bags. The initiative pays homage to Monsieur Dior’s past as a gallery owner and collector, who exhibited the avant-garde and surrealist artists of his time which also happened to include some of his friends: Christian Bérard, Salvador Dalí, Max Jacob, and more.

An exaltation of contemporary art, the Dior Lady Art project has produced over 270 bags in collaboration with 99 figures from the art sphere to date. This year marks a decade since its inception, and the landmark edition sees the bag made anew by Jessica Cannon (U.S.A.), Patrick Eugène (U.S.A.), Eva Jospin (France), Ju Ting (China), Lakwena (U.K.), Lee Ufan (Korea), Sophia Loeb (Brazil), Inès Longevial (France), Marc Quinn (U.K.), and Alymamah Rashed (Kuwait). From their corners of the world, these visionaries bring their storied disciplines to dialogue with the French house’s savoir-faire.

The artists’ modes of storytelling are generous and diverse, and the distinctiveness of each of their mediums is apparent as they reimagine one to five bags each. Atlanta-based Patrick Eugène was born in New York to Haitian parents and interlaces uniting elements between his origins and the history of Dior through the use of pearls, leather, raffia, and bamboo. Sophia Loeb, who was born in São Paulo, Brazil, harnesses her advocacy of harmonious human co-existence with the natural world via three bags that exemplify gardens made of metal wires and embossed leather, among others.

The intentions and inspirations behind each artist’s work are chronicled in a new book unveiled by Dior. A 452-page retrospective retracing all editions, the Rizzoli-published Dior Lady Art: The Lady Dior Reinvented by 99 Artists features the original pieces specially staged and photographed for the anthology. In a statement, the brand celebrates their project and new publication as “a vibrant constellation uniting artists and artisans, a new way of approaching accessories, no longer as simple adornments, but as symbols capable of suffusing beauty and wonder into everyday life.”

The Lady Dior bag itself was born in 1995, and was named in honor of Lady Diana, Princess of Wales, who wore it on her arm during a trip to Paris. French journalist Jérôme Hanover breaks down its shape for his essay for Dior Lady Art, “Its form is rectangular: its base; trapezoidal: its slender sides; not quite square: its front and back. That is the basic volume. And on top of this slightly tapering parallelepiped are two segments of a circle as its handles. Circle, line, point.” 

If the bag itself is a distillation of Monsieur Dior’s first and last loves of architecture and fashion, and all those that bloomed in between, then the collaborative art project is a reification of his spirit, one that recognized the joy and essentiality of a constant, shared metamorphosis.