Light the way
Fulfilling a long-held dream to bring a fashion pilgrimage to India, Dior’s creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri set the stage in Mumbai for a monumental statement that beauty and craft are languages without borders. By Alice Birrell.
Kalpavriksha. Tree of life. It is a motif in cultures around the world, from Buddhism and cosmology, to Hinduism and symbolises the interconnectedness of all living things. Today it is rendered in an eggshell-white micro-crochet panel at Chanakya’s atelier, suspended from a wall in its downtown workshop in Mumbai. Casting a honeycomb of light through its filigree openwork, it is like an exquisite web spun from cotton. Nearby, workers from the atelier, known as some of the foremost textile and embroidery artisans in India, are in meditative states doubled over their respective works. They’re demonstrating a handful of the 300plus handcrafts that Chanakya holds expertise in. There is microbeading and appliqué, zardozi, a kind of metal bullion stitch, zari, an embroidery that traditionally uses real gold or silver for brocade applied to saris, and kantha or traditional quilting.
Like the idea of the tree, the crafts they practice connect them to something larger, a notion Dior creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri couldn’t stop thinking about as she formulated what we are here in India to see: Dior’s pre-fall ’23 collection, staged at the colossal Gateway of India monument. “Throughout history, textile was so important for different communities to have a dialogue between them,” she says. It was an idea that grew as she read Threads of Life by Clare Hunter, who she met and whose ideas on craft as a culturally agnostic tradition and universal mode of expression stayed with her. “It’s an important reference in my work because sometimes in fashion, we forget.”
Taking Dior to Mumbai, the French fashion house is the first ever to execute something of this scale and size in the country, inviting more than 800 attendees to gather for the occasion. In part, it is timed with the luxury market’s growth in India. Bain & Company forecasts the domestic luxury market to reach USD$200 billion by 2030, from USD$5.9 billion in 2022. It’s also spurred by a very personal desire of Chiuri’s to pull back the curtain on the array of hands who input their painstaking work into Dior’s collections. Not many know – given the emphasis on petite mains in French ateliers, who still carry out important work on collections – that India has long left its hand on the foremost European creations. It’s a cultural merging that’s hitherto been obscured in mainstream fashion narratives.
The show is a culmination of more than three decades of work, beginning when Chiuri met Karishma Swali, creative director of Chanakya International, who is also daughter of founder Vinod Shah. “Maria Grazia was actually here on a personal trip with her family. And we shared this idea of the importance of institutionalising craft,” she says of meeting Chiuri in India in 1992. “Because traditionally in India it’s done generationally from father to son.”
“We were discussing it over lunch and Maria Grazia very correctly pointed out that in all her trips to India, she’d always noticed men in our ateliers and she said, ‘Why don’t we dedicate the school to women because they’ve not had this opportunity for creative expression.’”
The school became Chanakya School, the thriving real-life fruits of that conversation realised in 2016. Not for profit, it trains women in craft who oftentimes come from underprivileged backgrounds and provides a clear pathway to economic empowerment. Inside the walls, some lined with a litany of art tomes spanning classical and Islamic, to palaeolithic and Japanese art, students also learn life skills. Financial literacy, support via childcare and health insurance is provided, the goal being self-determination on top of artisanal skill. “I really believe that creativity can help a lot of women to believe more in themselves,” says Swali.
One morning before the show, women dressed in white overcoats are poised over workspaces in brightly lit, airy classrooms. A hushed air of focus has descended for the morning’s work. All ages are represented here: one of the older students is 61. Some have heard about the school via word of mouth, many have never earned their own income.
They begin with basic stitches learned over six months, working through increasingly complex techniques, from beading and cord work to appliqué during an 18-month process. The final stage is spent under the tutelage of a master artisan, still predominantly male as the school’s long-term impacts will take time, before completion under supervision. These are breathtaking oversized panels of colour, texture and intricacy, depicting scenes taken from artworks. Fiery sunsets become brushstrokes rendered in thread, minute roses are executed in tightly coiled fabric, as small as tiny pearls.
The students work in church-like silence – there is no music or headphones and little is spoken – but there is much exchange going on, a dialogue in thread as knowledge is transferred in communion with the past: of traditions of craft, and trailblazing women. “Part of our curriculum is taught through historic women icons and how they, in spite of their circumstances, were able to lead the way for others,” says Swali. Learning about women architects, artists and royalty – from Frida Kahlo, to 18th-century Indian queen Ahilyabai Holkar – Swali hopes students recognise strong female qualities within themselves.
One of the first things they learn is their place in a time-honoured chain of artisans. It’s why, Swali explains, they work with visible dedication and respect. “They’re part of a circle that stands for certain values. Very early on it’s clear that this is a shared dialogue and automatically your level of responsibility is higher.”
For Chiuri, it’s in perfect accord with her long-term purpose at Dior. When she sent the now famous T-shirt carrying Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s words “We Should All Be Feminists” down the runway for her debut collection at Dior in 2017, some thought it was a gimmick. She has since proved her crusade to platform women isn’t. It’s well known she uses only female photographers, evoking the words of feminist art critics on clothing, and works in tandem with major female names in art, from Judy Chicago to Mickalene Thomas and Eva Jospin, to bring her sets to life.
Lesser known, is that the work of Chanakya was there on her first runway, gliding under the radar in the form of a silver princess dress. A full-circle skirt with corset bodice, the dress is made of a metallic thread so densely embroidered, it is a selfstanding structure. The threads are done in free air so don’t
need a base, an astounding technique called jal, meaning mesh.
Putting this kind of craftsmanship on the highest stage is a feminist pursuit for Chiuri. “For a long time, the idea of fashion was more a performing art in some ways and [it was common] not to speak about the craft and what is behind [the clothes],” she says. “Mr. Dior was more concentrated on the patronage, the silhouette, the construction, the shape – less about the processes,” she says of founder Christian Dior and the time of the label’s explosive growth in post-war France. His revolutionary 1947 New Look silhouette used vast, post-austerity amounts of yardage to create the feminine curves based on the designer’s Belle Epoque-era childhood. The rest – embroidery, textile crafts – were secondary decoration, little more than finishing touches, hence women’s domain. “Textiles were closer with this idea of feminine, in Italy, in Europe … like in India, and also domestic.”
The night of the Dior pre-fall ’23 show, an array of the techniques we’ve been shown arrange themselves in a considered constellation. Observers appreciate every detail, having seen the faces at work who are also watching at Chiuri’s invitation. At the edge of the Arabian sea, in the soupy night air, models showcase 99 looks underneath the Gateway of India to the thrumming of strings and roll of tabla drums.
Madras checks in electric palettes of rich emerald, marigold and pink, hand-spun in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, parade next to gold couching embroidery burnishing the back of an elegant cropped black jacket. Mirrors embedded in embroidery, or shisha, cover abbreviated shift dresses, a technique no single culture lays claim to, but universally made to ward off evil. Searing Rani pink – an Indian colour of celebration – is one of a suite of colours also made to nod to former Dior creative director Marc Bohan’s 1960s ouvre.
The collection pulsates with the primordial but is contained within elegant modern forms, crisp boxy silhouettes that borrow from kurta, sari and the ease and elegance of column silhouettes in loose trousers, tunics and shirting with Nehru collars. It’s a respectful interpretation of traditional shapes and a modern global proposition of luxury.
When asked why she thinks she’s one of the first to elevate Indian skill on such a stage (though fashion houses have held shows in India before, with Yves Saint Laurent in 1989 and Christian Dior himself in Mumbai and Delhi in 1962, each smaller affairs), Chiuri traces back to 1970s Rome. “When I was 20 years old, the initial companies were family companies, especially in Italy.” She cites preoccupations of preceding eras – the fashion-designer-as-celebrity 1980s, the minimalist 1990s so rooted in European and Japanese aesthetics, and brand identities tied up in their country of provenance – preventing
a wider purview. “The idea to promote ‘made in Italy’, ‘made in France’, ‘made in USA …’”
Globalisation is only now breaking down some of these old hierarchies. “I don’t think there was a conscious awareness of this importance of being able to talk about collective creativity,” says Swali. Today Chiuri’s Dior is made by the collective – in France or India. “We are like one creative studio,” she says. “People think that when you are a designer you do a sketch, you realise it, but it’s not true. This is a little part of our job. There is a big community that support you and input their creativity in your idea and we build [it] together.”
Today’s creative exchange across continents and cultures is the latest in a line of projects embarked on by Chiuri at Dior: there’s been Morocco, Spain, and next up, Mexico for Dior’s resort show. Each project was undertaken with a feeling that her experiences alone weren’t enough to create a truly global house. She recalls arriving at Dior and not so much being daunted by leading a historic fashion house, but doing right by women everywhere. “I felt immediately responsible to be in charge of the company where the idea was to represent an idea of femininity. I was scared because I don’t think that my background is enough,” she says. “I am an Italian and born in Rome. My education is very close with the West culture, Europe’s culture.”
Chiuri’s global mindset was galvanised during the pandemic, when smaller workshops and ateliers practising ancient techniques risked closure and knowledge lost forever. “I was shocked during covid. We were the only ones that tried to work and [to make a show] with Dior,” she recalls. “Probably I am more sensitive to this because I saw how many skills we lost in Italy. Because we are not to forget that Italy in some way is not so different from India. Each region is different,” she says referring to the multitudinous Italian crafts.
“I think without patronisation of a skill from a house like Dior … we do run a risk,” says Swali. Chiuri considers her legacy at Dior. “I’m now 59. I’ve worked in this industry for a long time. I want to work on this project and this connection because I think it’s important for the new generation,” she reflects. “They lost the sense of what this means to work in fashion.”
Swali remembers the creation of the colossal toran, a traditional doorway hanging for welcoming guests, for the show, made entirely by Chanakya. The women chose which craft to use. “The level of excitement to welcome someone and also to represent who they were was incredible. They knew the symbolism and what it stood for and why it should be a certain way.” The night it was put up, Swali asked the women how they felt. “They were looking up at it and said, ‘Jai hind ’, translated roughly, it is ‘an ode to the country’. So suddenly they were cultural ambassadors of the country and they were representing an artisanal legacy,” she says. “The embroidery is a language,” Chiuri adds. “They can use their voice.”