“I have Created Flower Women”: Rebirth in the Designs of Christian Dior
Christian Dior has timelessly made progressive designs that are bold and definitive of female beauty and yet they are both demure and delicate. Dior himself once exclaimed that “I have created flower women” after making stem -waisted skirts in 1948. His expression of what he has begot through his designs resonate through each of Dior’s designs until today. Dior’s ability to pay ode to the shapes of women - not just draping them in fabric - transformed the fashion houses at the time. Yet how does the Dior of today create the modern “flower women” in a society where women are finally emancipated from previous limitations and restrictions. Dior embraces this increasing autonomy and freedom of the female figure and marries them into Dior’s earliest elation .
Image Sourced from Vogue Runway App Photograph by Yannis Vlamos
The Spring 2014 Couture Collection sees a regeneration of the floral. The latticed circles of the dress almost epitomise the petals of a flower. Instead of dressing them as the structure of a flower, they are merely suggestions of the beauty that the botanical entails . The structure and separation of the dress is provocative yet it still retains the sophistication of Dior designs. Simons achieves this through the intricate lace detailing underneath the top of the dress. What is most interesting about this dress is the graphic design which injects this piece with colour and vibrancy. The surrealist print which gapes through the design depicts a woman walking up the stairs, surrounded by flowers, as if she is walking into the chest of the model. This is utterly transformative of a Dior design. The print suggests that the femininity depicted belongs on the inside of the model (hence why the stairs are leading “into” the model). This print consequently shows that the femininity of the flowers are an external expression of the female’s interior elegance. It is the Renaissance of the modern woman – the clarity of the offset between print and the whiteness of the dress is representative of the assuredness she has in herself.
Image sourced from Vogue Runway App
Maria Grazia Chiuri’s botanical designs in the Pre – Fall 2017 collection marry the delicate into the dark, bold and powerful. The blazer is a parallel to Dior’s earlier designs. Although it is shapely it isn’t as form fitting as the original designs – it is looser, more relaxed; still enhancing this femininity of the female shape but without suffocating or restricting the modern woman. The earthy palette of the blazer perfectly conforms to Pre- Fall connotations and expectations but it transgresses expectations of femininity and delicate beauty that a softer palette would perhaps indicate. The sheerness and utter transparency of the mesh dress is revolutionary in the “flower women”. It is impossible not to view this spectacle as a “flower wom[an]” as she is covered in a botanical print. And yet the lucidity of the mesh design reveals the female form beneath. This creates a brand new statement of the primitive acceptance of the female form before any ornamentation of clothing or design. Grazia Chiuri pays complete tribute to both the authenticity of the women and the ecstasy of potential in design with Dior in its likeness to that of flowers.
Image sourced from Vogue Runway App
The Spring 2020 Ready – to – Wear takes this authenticity, and once again transparency through the mesh designs, of the modern woman and elates it into an ethereal, bohemian design.
Image sourced from Vogue Runway App. Photograph by Alessandro Lucioni
Dior combines the delicacy and femininity that it is renowned for and dresses the contemporary woman by embracing the legitimate truth, autonomy and self-determination of the female.
