Feminist takeover at Dior

Fashion director Rebecca Lowthorpe reflects on the biggest power move of the year IN FASHION INDUSTRY TERMS, 2016

might as well be known as the Year of the Creative Power Shuffle. With so many designers embroiled in high-stake musical chairs at some of the world’s major-league brands, no debut could have been more hotly anticipated than that of Maria Grazia Chiuri at Christian Dior. The first woman to be handed the creative reins in the company’s 70-year history, she followed Raf Simons, John Galliano, Gianfranco Ferré, Marc Bohan, Yves Saint Laurent and Mr Dior himself. Chiuri, 51, was also designing solo for the first time in two decades, by leaving her design partner, Pierpaolo Piccioli, behind at Valentino. Perhaps it was Chiuri’s newfound independence that influenced her first collection for Dior, or maybe it was the timing of it, in a year when so much potential power lay in the hands of more women. Whatever, she was damned if she was going to

lit ly tinker the politely t around edges of this global powerhouse. ‘We should all be feminists,’ read the slogan T-shirt that will go down in fashion history as the single most important piece of her first collection. Notably, it was a simple (and relatively inexpensive) tee that spoke to a broader audience of women more succinctly than any ice-white fencing suits, coal-black tailoring or delicate net skirts ever could. Where she will go from here is anyone’s guess, but make no mistake, hers is, as another T-shirt announced, a ‘Dior(e)volution’.