Dior Spring-Summer 2020 haute couture show: Maria Grazia Chiuri celebrates women as modern-day goddesses

Inspired by ancient costumes and classical representations of goddesses, the Dior Spring-Summer 2020 haute couture collection poses the question “Are Clothes Modern?” – a recurring thread in the creative process of Maria Grazia Chiuri, Creative Director for Dior Women’s collections – while elevating Dior’s codes. The haute couture silhouette becomes a neo-platonic allegory of beauty, suggesting a perfect alliance of intellectual strength and aesthetic harmony.

“What if Women Ruled the World?” This committed question raised by the work of iconic American artist Judy Chicago became the driving inspiration for the creations by Maria Grazia Chiuri for the Dior Spring-Summer 2020 haute couture collection, presented at the Musée Rodin.

Each new season’s collection brings the Creative Director an opportunity to study a specific subject and contributes to the evolution of her singular approach. In opening herself up to other ways of thinking, the Creative Director seeks to grasp the complexity of relationships between feminism and femininity, resculpting the body like a manifesto.

The Female Divine, an installation specially designed by Judy Chicago for the garden of the Musée Rodin, at once serves as a sanctuary, a stage and a monumental artwork for the Dior Spring-Summer 2020 haute couture collection. But above all it represents a tribute to, and reappropriation of, an ancestral power that goes beyond the idea of procreation. Maria Grazia Chiuri highlights the vision of a pioneer, a founder of American feminist art, as the revivor of a triumphant, divine conception of femininity, mistress of her destiny.

The peplos, a garment of timeless modernity, is reinterpreted as evening dresses. The drape, with its clean line, follows the curve of the body and gives structure to the silhouettes, while fitted jackets with loose collars, and skirts and pants are transformed into tuxedos in more masculine materials like houndstooth and herringbone, woven with gold.