Brenda Nesbitt
“I designed clothes for flower-like women, clothes with rounded shoulders, full feminine busts, and willowy waists above enormous spreading skirts. I wanted my dresses to be constructed like buildings, molded to the curves of the female form, stylizing its shape,” Dior said. In his “Little Dictionary of Fashion,” from 1954, he clarified: “After women, flowers are the most lovely thing God has given the world.”
In 1947 Christian Dior broke with established traditions. The silhouette he imagined never looked back to the survival mode of WWII and its determined masculine lines. Instead it moved toward the feminine form, joyfully exploiting its curves to reawaken a sensuality both seductive and distinguished. Dior’s “New Look” assured the couturier’s immediate success and his legacy, just as it launched a revolution.
The “Bar Suit” — with its soft shoulders, cinched waist and yards of cloth in the skirt — was the star of Dior’s first collection, “Corolle,” named for that circlet of petals at the center of a flower. This year at the DAM, The Bar Suit greets us as we enter, as if to say, ah, you’re here…let’s go out. I know just the place: the bar at the Hôtel Plaza Athénée — in Paris, of course, where café society gathered.
We turn again to find the rest of the “corelles” dressed in black and white, all theme and variation. And if they suggest flowers turned upside down, you’d be right. To know what inspired Dior’s first collection is to know its enduring inspiration: the beauty of flowers and the female form. Follow curving paths to follow those threads through six designers who succeeded Dior after 1957 — Yves Saint-Laurent, Marc Bohan, Gianfranco Ferre, John Galliano, Raf Simons, and as of 2016, Maria Grazia Chiuri, the first woman to take up the mantel as head of design.
202 mostly couture garments, plus accessories, photos, drawings, sketches, runway videos, and red carpet moments with the famous, past and present, bring the Dior story to Denver. The DAM welcomes this 70+ year retrospective for its Western Hemisphere debut. (Yet another reason to love our town.) And much like a house of couture, where artisans in the atelier nurse the designer’s ideas to life, each signature exhibit of the Denver Art Museum is the work of many hands.
The curator, Florence Müller, art and fashion historian, is a Dior expert. Magically, the show feels like entertainment but suggests that fashion be considered art. Why not think of current masters as once apprentices, it seems to say, pointing to those Dior designers who looked back into archives to find inspiration.
Once in it, it’s hard not to marvel at the art of mounting the exhibit itself. What did it take to dress all those mannequins in sumptuous fabric, to stage it, to create an architectural set design specific to this show? For that, the team called on the genius of Shohei Shigematsu at OMA-Partners. Dressing the mannequins was another matter. The mid-19th century Stockman dressmaker forms, still used by couturiers, caused Müller concern: how would the garments look on them, given the lack of the usual features on modern-day mannequins — heads, arms and legs? Solution: fly in a dozen gifted dressers, some from Paris, and give them the time needed to do the job.
The curator was pleasantly surprised: “…the dressers have been able to shape the clothes and bring them to life. It’s very intense work and beautiful to look at, almost like a couture workshop.” How perfectly appropriate.
“Dior: From Paris to the World” is on view at the Denver Art Museum through March 3, 2019.
