DIOR X D-AIR LAB: FASHION MEETS INNOVATION
DENIZ AKKAYA
Maria Grazia Chiuri stepping into a new era with the Dior AW22 Collection…
Situated on the cusp of Dior’s history, on the continual pulse of fashion, Maria Grazia Chiuri’s collections are suspended between the present and the future, beating to the rhythm of simultaneity, synchronicity, in tune with the times.
The Next Era* is the title of the work Mariella Bettineschi imagined for the Dior ready-to-wear fall-winter 2022-2023 show, wherein the Italian artist proposes a gallery of paintings composed of large-scale portraits of women from the history of painting from the 16th to the 19thcentury. Their cut up, stacked eyes question the judgment that has conditioned – and still conditions – women past and present. The gaze is reversed to suggest another reading of art history. This “framework” of the fashion show breathes life into Maria Grazia Chiuri’s concepts; notably (re)constructing a performative relationship between the body and the garment in a technical, aesthetic perspective, in a succession of operations associating forms, savoir-faire, materials and futuristic technologies.
The iconic Bar jacket is redesigned with the addition of technical innovations in collaboration with the Italian start-up D-Air lab. Aesthetics and technology are brought together by reconsidering Dior’s heritage in all parts from clothes to accessories. The show witnessed an impressive exploration of the past, present and future. The inside of Monsieur Dior’s garments reveals an extraordinary construction system. The Bar jacket, revisited by the Creative Director for this collection, transforms the structure of the original model into a system that regulates the body’s humidity and warms it up if necessary, thanks to innovative techniques developed in the D-Air lab** laboratories, while a bodysuit – crisscrossed by what appears to be an organic network of colored veins and arteries in luminescent colors – maintains a constant temperature.
