Dior celebrates the craftsmanship

Dior celebrates craftsmanship and tailoring in the Haute Couture spring/summer 2022 collection presented in Paris on January 24. In the haute couture show, white, grey and a touch of black play a fundamental role. Monochromatic and ton sur ton also the sophisticated embroideries on the clothes and accessories, such as socks. The linear silhouettes, the return of suits with long skirts, Bar jackets and flared tunics, pure tones, are intertwined with an abundance of embroidery and textures of pearls and crystals that embroider socks and shoes, making them unique pieces.

Undeniable as the Italian designer Maria Grazia Chiuri has always given a fundamental importance to craftsmanship and to the work of her tailors, we can subscribe to her words about the clothes made for the show: "The haute couture as imagined by many would be unrealizable. Creativity alone is not enough, you need the technical skills to make certain pieces. For example, in the collection there are several jackets in double wool, that is "open": they are light, impalpable, yet they keep their shape perfectly. Very few seamstresses are capable of making them, it takes years of training. If one of them leaves, it's a big problem for me. Yet, who knows why, especially in Italy - but not only there - there is still the idea that craftsmanship is inferior to art. Nothing more false. Another thing I hate is that seamstresses here in France are called 'petites mains': they're not little hands, they're giants.."

She continued: "The structures of the dresses are designed not to look complicated, the embroidered stockings required hundreds of trials before I got the result I was looking for, ditto for the knit dress, which is very complicated. There is a peplum made of cloths held only by a few stitches fixed on the crater neck. It looks super easy, in reality it's one of the most complex pieces in the entire collection. But haute couture should be like this: its complexity should be invisible."

The choice of soft colors of the clothes contrasts with the exuberance of the paintings on the walls of the Rodin Museum, location of the Parisian fashion show. The U-shaped catwalk, in fact, was surrounded by a series of immense tapestries reproducing the works of Indian artists Madhvi and Manu Parekh, husband and wife and friends of the designer, with whom she has collaborated since the days of Fendi.