In the new year we have the first new muse “Punk Alice”. At Dior's haute couture show in Paris, Lewis Carroll's feisty heroine got a 21st century makeover. Imagine Alice from Wonderland fame. But then there's the Gala era, inspired by Charli XCX, and the wardrobe handcrafted by Paris's best seamstresses. That's where I start taking photos.
A snowy white cross-backed lace pinafore dress was worn with a trembling black silk mohawk headdress. Alice's striped stockings have been reimagined as lace-up leather gladiator boots. Her bubbly skirt became a birdcage crinoline, and her girlish ribbon was tied at the throat with a dog collar. In the front row, Pamela Anderson smiled under a dotted black veil and Williams beamed in her tightly coiled braids. A fantastical landscape featuring feathered headdresses and botanical lions, with eyes and flowers embroidered on the walls, was set in Rodin's garden.
Escapism is a diplomatic answer to the tight spot many fashion designers now find themselves in. Dior, where designer Maria Grazia Ciuri spelled out her worldview with feminist slogan T-shirts and advocated diversity through a long-term collaboration with a Mumbai school for women artisans, was born with progressive principles. It was at the forefront of the decade. Mainstream fashion.
Fashion is feeling the pressure to fall in line as Trump's second term is changing the tectonic plates of culture. Asked backstage before the show if politics influenced this collection, Chiuri said no, but added, “Fashion is a playground of imagination. And in your imagination, you… You can create for yourself the world you want to live in.”
Dior is in the Vibeshift headlights. It has emerged as the highest status wardrobe in Trump's court, with a skirt suit in the distinctive hourglass silhouette of Dior's famous new look worn by Melania Trump on election night and worn by Ivanka Trump at the inauguration attended by Dior. Trump is the CEO, Delphine Arnault, and her billionaire Father Bernard.
Here, Chiuri swapped a signature new look for a little-known chapter of Dior's history. I ignored my waist. She fused this reference to late 1950s Dior with details borrowed from the Gothica-charged Alice in Wonderland depicted in Dorothea Tanning's surrealist paintings. Her gravity-defying hair and jellyfish tangles on her skirt appeared on the runway. Chiuri said backstage that she liked “the idea of nonsense.”
After newsletter promotion
Dior has been booming under designer Chiuri since 2016. HSBC recently estimated that its revenue would more than triple from €2.7bn (£2.3bn) in 2018 to €9bn in 2023. It benefited from recent strength in the dollar. But rumors of change at Dior persist, as a new designer is creating excitement at great rival Chanel. This collection is peppy, elegant, defiantly disorienting, and doesn't usually tell a straight story.
