Feminist art icon Judy Chicago has been announced as the designer of Dior’s upcoming couture show, which will take place at Paris’s Rodin Museum. And, you don’t even have to be upset about your invitation to fashion week getting lost in the post! The installation, titled The Female Divine, will then be on display between January 21 and 26.
By special invitation of Dior’s Maria Grazia Chiuri, Chicago will be the latest in a long line of women artists – including Mickalene Thomas and Penny Slinger – to have collaborated with the brand. Chicago is known for hosting dinner parties for ladies and blowing things up, and her upcoming installation for Dior will be an immersive experience. It is said to feature an oversized goddess that extends into a woven runway covered in flowers and, even though we haven’t seen any photos yet, it already sounds amazing. To make it even better, the collab is socially minded too. In tandem with Dior’s support for women in a male-dominated sector, and with Chicago’s on-going love of embroidery, Chicago has also designed 21 banners embroidered in English and French made by female students at an embroidery school in India. The text includes questions like “What if women ruled the world?” These are a follow-up to t-shirts previously released by Dior under Chiuri’s reign, like that iconic tee recalling Linda Nochlin’s seminal essay: “Why have there been no great women artists?”
Following on from Chicago’s iconic Dinner Party of the 1970s, a dinner table that invited women throughout history – from Boadicea to Emily Dickinson – to dinner, accompanied by plates of heavily decorated ceramic vulvas, the set will also feature tableware especially designed for Dior Maison, which we’re hoping we’ll be able to snap up soon. And the new Chicago ceramics are said to incorporate shells and symbols associated with the goddess.
To end with a statement from Dior itself: “Judy Chicago invites us to reconsider the roles and power relationships that determine, through the lens of gender, the way we live together today”. This is a combination of art and fashion that we simply cannot wait to see!
Text Lizzy Vartanian
