Her Dior: Maria Grazia Chiuri's New Voice

The reader of this exquisitely rendered monograph is in for quite a surprise. What exactly is the raison d’être for this book, as it is certainly not a book about Maison Dior, the brand, its DNA, or that it was started by a man who loved making women beautiful.

Frankly the first four or five pages, which by the way is the only real text in the book, is nothing more than pseudo intellectual claptrap that talks in circles and is more geared to a mind that is blessed with some superior knowledge of psychology and semantics. No author needs reiterate to any fashion reader that most women’s clothes were/are designed by men and that women see themselves differently than men see them—thank god for that as male designers have produced far more beautiful clothes than what you see in this book.

The other confusing aspect of Her Dior is that is a book about fashion (her vision of Dior) or is this a book that spotlights the photographic works of female photographers when photographing Dior? With each photographer’s segment comes a little phrase or quote which evaded this reader and am sure will evade any other informed fashion reader: “We rise by lilting ourselves, why have there been no great women artists, alchemy is a form of magic, so the transformation of images, or bodies, in art acts on dream/psychic substance.” Someone with greater insight into the inner mechanics of the female psyche perhaps might understand why these quotes/ phrases are interspersed throughout the book and what they mean.

Feminism as defined by Merriam Webster is “a belief in and advocacy of the political, economic and social equality of the sexes expressed especially through organized activity on behalf is women’s rights and interests.”

So, this well informed and educated fashion reader surmises that putting slogans on T-shirts and using cultural appropriation is how a less than formidable designer deals with being a feminist as if that matters in the business of fashion. Most readers would agree there are some stellar images, but for the most part the verbiage is mental masturbation in its highest form, making Miuccia and Raf sound like kindergarteners in the sand box.