With its Cruise 2024 show, Dior declares its love for Frida Kahlo and Mexico

A sprawling, surreal, multifaceted, magical city… created at an altitude of more than 2,200 meters above sea level, Mexico City is not only dizzying, but also plays like an extra soul with all its advantages. It was in this colorful, magical metropolis, the former capital of the Aztec Empire, which has become one of the most populated in the world, that the artistic director of Dior, Maria Grazia Chiuri, decided to finally realize her dream of showing the collection. a cruise from home in this “constellation of emotive places” as he describes Mexico in his note of intent. Fascinated by Mexican culture, the Italian designer had already captured the soul of this country during his Dior 2019 cruise collection, which was organized in the stables of the Chantilly estate. Then he was inspiredskirmishes”, these Mexican riders who compete on horseback in their traditional t-shirt dresses.

Ode to Frida Kahlo

Today, another iconic Mexican figure has ignited her creative spark for this Cruise 2024 collection for Dior: Frida Kahlo, whom Maria Grazia Chiuri first discovered as a child at an exhibition in Italy. A few decades later, he crossed paths again with the intimate universe of the Mexican artist, first at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum (2018) and last year at the Palais Galliera through the exhibition Frida Kahlo, Beyond Appearance. In Mexico City, you meet the image of the legendary artist on every street corner, from the grand luxury hotels to St.Mercados:from the most picturesque neighborhoods to the famous Caza Azul, a must for all tourists to the metropolis where the artist lived most of her life. But beyond her status as a national and global icon, it is primarily the way in which this avant-garde woman was able to transcend her broken body, and no doubt her heart, through her allure that partly inspired Maria Grazia Chiuri. .

Aztec goddess

Frida Kahlo’s fashion statements were life statements. He developed his style in the same intuitive way he painted. Adopting traditional costumes in a post-revolutionary spirit to respect the customs of her country, but also abandoning her Tehuana costume after her divorce from the great muralist Diego Rivera, dressing and cutting her hair like a man. The kind who flaunts everything from mustaches and monocots as a sign of feminist protest against macho social conventions, to flowers in her hair or jewels dangling from her arms. Frida Kahlo had a presence and magnetism that captivated both women and men. When writer Carlos Fuentes pictured him arriving at the opening of the Palacio de Fine Arts in Mexico City in 1934, he wrote: “It was the entrance of the Aztec goddess.”

Love story

Strong and fragile at the same time, but with an unfailing flexibility, we can only understand how much this iconic figure could be a source of inspiration for the feminist designer Maria Grazia Chiuri. The location chosen for his Dior cruise show in Mexico City is also symbolic; The former Jesuit College of San Ildefonso, turned into an art school, is where Frida Kahlo studied, but above all, where she met Diego Rivera, her great love. On Saturday evening, therefore, the first guests of the parade arrive in this magnificent building in the historic heart of the capital. It’s raining, the rainy season is in full swing, but it doesn’t matter. The magic is already palpable in the large yard with trees that will serve as the collection’s number. Murals by seven Mexican muralists (including Orozco and Diego Rivera) also haunt the building. Among the nearly 600 guests, including many locals, the arrival of Naomi Watts, Rachel Zegler, Riley Keough and Letitia Casta sparked the usual photographers’ ball excitement. Alicia Keys, dark glasses wearing beaded dreadlocks, activates all the flashes. He takes up residence in the balconies of the second floor. The show can begin.

Masculine Feminine Magic

The models, with brown hair, all wearing two beautiful braids that meet at the back, move forward in the courtyard. Each verse emanates an emotional power that transcends rain and night. The heroines are dressed in black dresses and lace necklaces, white blouses and full-skirted skirts. huipils – the traditional tunic – revisited with refined versions, follow one another in an atmosphere as poetic as it is solemn. Powerful Frida Kahlo with thick brows, red and black leather cowboy boots, naturally enhancing their femininity with gold butterfly necklaces. Butterflies, symbols of transformation, are everywhere in this collection, in the flight of jewels, on the belts, and live in the toile de Jouy pajama sets depicting the flora and fauna of Mexico. Velvet boasts an attractive palette of colors. The cropped versions of the bar jacket are enhanced with embroidery. Girls also go for stately three-piece suits or tuxedos, inspired by Frida Kahlo’s photos of her playing the drums. Then the pink dress, seen in the artist’s self-portraits, suddenly illuminates this magical realism atmosphere.

Embroidery Made in Mexico

In this sober and poetic collection, which avoids any pitfalls of revised folklore, many pieces were made in collaboration with Mexican artisans. This is often the case in Dior’s cruise collections, whose idea is also to celebrate local know-how around the world. Here, Maria Grazia Chiuri gathered around her several generations of artisans from different regions of Mexico. The collaborative process ranges from creating original pieces, mixing embroidery and fabric, to commissioning shirts and T-shirts from the Dior archives, as well as community-made shirts.

For example, the work of Narci Areli Morales, who founded the Rocinante brand dedicated to reviving Oaxacan know-how in 2012. For this show, she directed the production of an embroidery technique by a community of Mixtec women representing the birds. and plants represented in geometric shapes. These patterns elevate the collection’s jackets, shirts and skirts. Another exclusive collaboration. these jewels created using goldsmithing techniques from the Plata Villa workshop in Mexico City. Using fine silver and the aperture technique, they imagined rings, pendants and bracelets around the butterfly.

Feminist art performance

In the show’s finale, a series of models line up together, dressed in cotton muslin dresses from the Dior archive, with feminist words and symbols sewn onto them in red thread. This performance was developed by the Mexican artist Elina Chauvet, whose aesthetic work revolves around the theme of femicides and the silence surrounding them, especially in the state of Chihuahua where she was born. Maria Grazia Chiuri invited her to her fashion show, thus reaffirming her major support for feminist art. A thoughtful finish that only emphasizes the strength of this collection, whose beauty will also remain in the memories and history of Mexico City.