Christian Dior Haute Couture Fall Winter 2023

Christian Dior Haute Couture Fall Winter 2023 – 2024 Collection. Haute couture shapes and constructs its own temporality. A specific time that reflects the processes and excellence that couture demands in its creation. A time apart, meticulous, that animates memory and imagination with a dual movement: couture evolves according to a liturgical rhythm, where the past is integrated into every beat of the present.

In the Atelier, there are no paper patterns, as the sketched form is morphed into a dress in the image of the imprint, embracing the body’s singularity. Maria Grazia Chiuri pursues her ideals with this Christian Dior haute couture Fall Winter 2023 – 2024 collection, which refines to perfection the sartorial elements that can be described as archetypal: the tunic, the peplum, the cape, the stole.

Maria Grazia Chiuri’s encounter with Marta Roberti, an artist whose work transforms the catwalk into an art gallery, is part of this return to sacred sources. “I studied the iconographies of various goddesses, who are almost always associated with animals, and I presented myself imitating their postures, initially in a performative way, copying their poses and movements with my body, incarnating their peculiarities until I made them my own.” Thus, it is inspired by the words and approach of Marta Roberti, who draws (on) goddesses, that the Creative Director of Dior women’s lines has taken up the poetic gesture of couture merging dress and body.

Models compose a hieratic sequence as if in the steps of all the divinities who have ruled and still rule the world. A vertical silhouette, flat shoes. The colors selected are white, beige, silver and pale gold. Jackets and coats are structured by the folds beneath the chest, evoking classical statues and the fluting of columns. Pearls, symbols of purity, are featured in numerous embroideries. Intertwined with silver threads they glimmer iridescently.

The shimmering textures of the sixties enjoy a revival, embellishing long skirts and dresses. Wool and cashmere occupy a key place; a cape evocative of a holy garment, sometimes embroidered, enhances a variety of outfits. Pleating plays a leading role, notably present on the sleeves of men’s jackets.

By perpetuating the cult of the goddess and reinterpreting the founding emblems of antiquity, the défilé becomes a contemporary ritual, illustrating the strength and fragility of femininity, which supports and sustains the community we form. Recalling the past, it guides us towards a vision of the future endowed with sensitivity and essential attention to detail.

Thanks to excavations carried out by feminist archaeologist Marija Gimbutas, Neolithic cultures have been rediscovered and studied, revealing a real “lost world,” where societies were characterized by their egalitarian dimension. Gender relations were balanced, as female power was considered the highest in the universe, since it had the capacity to give life.

The Mediterranean region, ancient Europe and Anatolia produced an abundance of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic images. The cosmogonic goddess – reflecting ritual practices linked to the cycles of the seasons – has for millennia been a metaphor for Nature’s sacred source of life, death and rebirth.

Since prehistoric times, earth deities have shaped stories and customs the world over. The divine figure that first appeared in the Palaeolithic has endured and been worshipped by many civilizations over the ages and millennia, taking on diverse forms, such as the Bronze Age Potnia Theron, Ishtar, Cybele, Durga in Hinduism, the Aztec goddess Coatlicue and many others.

The installation** designed by Marta Roberti for this Dior haute couture défilé is a tribute to these goddesses, supreme forces who governed the universe, divine mothers often accompanied by leopards, bulls, snakes and other animals.

A vision of art and life, where the fundamental aim is not to conquer and plunder, but to cultivate the land and provide the material and spiritual necessities for a dignified life. The presence of animals is essential to this composition. They are beings with whom we share life on Earth, guiding spirits, apotropaic, who are sometimes an integral part of the goddess. The goddess may, for example, have feathers and claws, in a hybridization of animal and human, fused into a single being.

Marta Roberti immerses her female characters in luxuriant nature, blending them with animals with whom they coexist harmoniously. In this cosmogony of freely superimposed symbols belonging to different traditions, the artist also includes several of her self-portraits performing asanas, yoga positions. She offers us an image of herself embodying all her desire to reconstruct a forgotten past in order to repair the torn present.