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In 2016, Maria Grazia Chiuri was appointed the first female director of the House of Dior. This was a pretty momentous event, as perhaps the most notorious predecessor to this had been John Galliano whose designs I had always loved, but whose behavior (involving anti-semitic remarks which were horrid) left me feeling bereft of the legacy of Dior, which was very sad to me.
With the hiring of Maria Grazia Chiuri however, the venerated House of Dior seemed to find new meaning in a female designer who was not only empowered herself but made a point of espousing that power for ALL women. She embraced feminist ideologies in her creations, and, in particular, her 2020 show really entranced me as it embraced the art and feminism of the artist Judy Chicago and I found this to be so intriguing and so refreshing!
From the article above, “Over a six-month gestation, Chiuri’s conversation with Chicago birthed this idea about the pagan worship of goddesses and the struggle of women artists to find their own means of expression within the female-excluding patriarchal systems of the Western history of art. “The relationship between creativity and femininity really touched me, because I live…
