Modern-day witches enchant Dior Spring-Summer 2024 show

Maria Grazia Chiuri, Creative Director of Dior women’s lines, called on artist Elena Bellantoni to create colorful immersive scenography in Paris, creating contrast with the omnipresent black and white palette of her new ready-to-wear collection.     

Over the seasons, Maria Grazia Chiuri continually explores relationships between the body and clothes, femininity and feminism. Like Elena Bellantoni’s monumental NOT HER art piece, her creations refuse clichés. Walls covered with split-flap displays presented a succession of female figures – including the artist herself – subverting sexist advertisements.  

Inspired for this collection by the figure of the witch, the creative director conceived a wardrobe for full-moon nights, with intensely luminous whites and deep blacks. The Eiffel Tower makes a phantom cameo as a recurrent motif on architectural pieces, and a bewitching Plan de Paris weaves a shadowy motif on skirts or protective coats. Fabrics have lacerations and tears, or traces of combustion, also evoking the work of Italian artist Alberto Burri. Stars appear in embroideries, including the emblematic Mille-fleurs, revisited in a darker iteration. Medicinal herbs, fantastical animals and fringes swaying like charms are all part of the imaginary world. Knitwear caresses the curves of the body, revealing undergarments, and bared shoulder tops cast a spell. Perennial flowers are found alongside unabashedly darker blooms, ornamenting portraits of independent women who assert their differences and secrets.