Maria Grazia Chiuri: “My show in New York celebrates feminist struggles”

Maria Grazia Chiuri is someone who puts a lot of herself into her work, from the social causes she supports to the events she organizes, to the places where she presents her collections. One of her goals, since she became creative director of Dior womenswear in 2016, was to show in New York, among the places, she says, that have most marked her cultural education. Now, eight years later, she has finally succeeded.

“The first time I was here I was a little girl: I was overwhelmed by the energy, the strength, the style of its streets. I remember the first visit to the wing dedicated to feminist art of the Brooklyn Museum as if it were yesterday: I was amazed before The dinner party, the installation by Judy Chicago. I had never seen anything like it, that moment was fundamental for me.” Her passion for feminist art was therefore also born in this way, and it is no coincidence that it was at the Brooklyn Museum that the designer chose to show last Monday its pre-fall 2024 collection.
The occasion was also a way to celebrate Suzanne Santoro, an Italian-American artist whose 1974 text, For a new expression, about the lack of representation of female genitalia in art, was heavily censored. In honor of that work, the models parade in a room decorated by Claire Fontaine – the duo responsible for Pensati Libera on Chiara Ferragni’s dress in Sanremo in 2023 and the title of the 2024 Art Biennale, Foreigners everywhere – with a series of large hands made from neon tubes While they make the symbolic gesture of the feminist struggle, which recalls the shape of a vulva.

The effect of the installation is immediate and, precisely for this reason, very powerful. Furthermore, since it is a community work, for Chiuri it well represents the spirit of the metropolis: “Here artists and creatives still help each other as no longer happens in European capitals. And I am always happy to offer the spotlight to artists and personalities who deserve much more attention than they get.”

Furthermore, personal reasons aside, New York was also instrumental in the rise of Christian Dior in 1947. “The success of the New Look here was so massive and immediate that Dior opened a subsidiary in the USA, studying the habits of women Americans to make clothes suited to their lifestyle, more dynamic and practical than the Parisian one”. Which, then, corresponds exactly to Chiuri’s aesthetics, which has always been in balance between classic elegance and pragmatism.

This time this tension is translated into men’s suits, white shirts that leave the back bare worn over grisaille trousers, denim ensembles complete with ties, black suits with pencil skirts and waisted jackets with basques, oversized coats thrown over silk slips decorated with the city skyline, fringed dresses, prints in which the French flag mixes with the American one. At the end of the show there was a surprise concert by Kim Gordon, with Sonic Youth, an icon of the hardest and purest New York rock, now 70 years old and with a frightening energy.
The ideal icon of the collection, however, is Marlene Dietrich, the diva who was best able to play on the contrast between masculine and feminine with her outfits: one of the releases also recalls her famous tailcoat in The Blue Angel.
Quoting the actress, it’s a moment to end up in the atmospheres, silhouettes and details of the 1940s, a period in which the world was shaken by conflicts. Just like it happens today. “Obviously reality influences me. But it’s not a creative question, but a personal one”, explains the stylist. “Dior is a global fashion house, which has employees all over the world: I am close to everything that happens to them. I remember the lost video calls with our communications director in China at the beginning of the pandemic, or the Ukrainian and Russian models who cried together backstage the day after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. What I feel is a “human” responsibility, not just a work one.