Miss Dior Absolutely Blooming. The new fragrance by Dior starring Natalie Portman. Absolutely floral, absolutely delicious. Made with exceptional roses from Dior Domains in Grasse.
"Un peu, beaucoup ... Absolutely!"
GRASSE AT THE HEART OF DIOR FRAGRANCES
The House of Christian
Dior and the House of Louis Vuitton, open an exceptional hub of
creation, Les Fontaines Parfumées, in Grasse, South of France. François
Demachy, Dior's perfumer-creator, will conceive the fragrance of
tomorrow just a few miles from Le Château de La Colle Noire, Christian
Dior's house, where it all began.
Direct after the Paris Haute Couture Week, on 7th July the house of DIOR was delighted to announce Ms. Maria Grazia Chiuri as
the new artistic director of women's haute couture, ready-to-wear and accessory
collections. Maria Grazia Chiuri leaved her role as Co-Creative Director
after 17 years with Maison VALENTINO and 8 in her role as Co-Creative
Director.
It was a homecoming for Gilles Mendel last month during Paris Couture Week, where the House of J. Mendel presented their 1st ever Haute Couture collection. The Frenchman left Paris for New York in the 1980s and he’s
built his business there, but it’s been a long-held dream of his to come
back to do a show.
Gilles was visibly thrilled backstage, explaining that
his first ever couture collection was a bridge of sorts between the two
places. Keith Haring was an artist famous in New York’s ’80s downtown
scene, and riffs on his signature energetic squiggles formed the basis
for graphic beaded patterns on evening columns. Paris was represented by
its familiar geometric maps: broad boulevards meeting up with circular
roundabouts, narrow streets intersecting with geometric park spaces.
Both references were subtle enough to not be too obvious. As a rule the
collection was better when Mendel used a lighter touch. Hand-stitched
labels featuring the Empire State Building or Paris in block letters
were a nice detail.
Mendel is a furrier, like his father was. This
being a Fall show, there was naturally quite a bit of the stuff here.
The first dress was made from small and smaller squares of shaved mink
embroidered into Haring-style swirls and stitched together into a grid.
Mendel used the same grid technique for the floor-scraping black coat
and the white jacket that followed. They were exquisite and extravagant.
They won’t necessarily keep you warm: In Mendel’s universe, that’s not
really the point. Stitching fur to tulle, he created peekaboo evening
coats through which the sequins and beads of his party dresses shone.
Other furs were bisected with long rows of functioning brass buttons.
Sleeves peeled off shoulders in a timely, if somewhat ungainly style.
Still more furs were misted with liquid gold, so they looked burnished.
Mendel’s enthusiasm may have gotten the best of him in some cases. The
standout of the bunch was among the most understated, a short jacket in
Russian broadtail with gold bead embroidery.
Discover the J. Mendel Autumn/Winter 2016/17 Haute Couture collection & runway show at the end of this post - enjoy! LoL, Andrea
Last July, Fendi marked Karl Lagerfeld’s 50th year at the Italian house with a Paris haute fourrure show. The designer is famously averse to birthdays and anniversaries “I
don’t look back,” he’s fond of saying but the house wasn’t going to let
a milestone like its own 90th slip by quietly. With the couture shows
wrapping up in Paris, Fendi shuttled guests by chartered plane to Rome
for another haute fourrure show last month.
Since Raf Simons quit Christian Dior
so suddenly last October, the two heads of the inhouse design-team Lucie Meier and Serge
Ruffieux, who stepped up to caretake the design direction, have been
managing it with unflustered aplomb. The potential for things going
terribly wrong was high, but they didn’t revert to a paralyzed dullness
in the face if the enormity of the task, or resort to an unhappy
repetition-by-rote of what Simons had been doing. The Fall/Winter
couture collection was a typical example of their non-uptight approach
to producing what a youngish woman might want to buy from Christian
Dior a feminine but, thankfully, not jolie madame collection in black
and white.
Inevitably, it was loosely based on the silhouette of
Christian Dior’s 1947 New Look Bar jacket and crinolined skirt, but
without anachronistic corseting or frothy tulle petticoats. Instead, the
impression was of relaxed black taffeta dresses, a concentration on
full skirts, tops flowing out to traily trains, and smatterings of gold
and silver embroidery. The official line was that the collection was
meant to emphasize the work of the Dior ateliers the part of the house
that provides the continuity of skills crucial to a couture house, no
matter which designers are coming and going.
To tell the truth, this
season didn’t showcase their abilities particularly well, as the
unfitted nature of the collection and the flat Roman sandals made the
whole seem more like clothes a young girl would take off on holiday than
grand occasion-wear. That, of course, is understandable when the
designers in charge presumably have little experience of the worlds that
wealthy clients actually inhabit. To take the possibilities of haute
couture to truly soaring heights requires the insights of someone who
knows both the techniques and the lifestyles inside out.
Before the interregnum of Meier and
Ruffieux ends, it behooves the wider industry to acknowledge that this
pair of Swiss nationals, thrown together in the Sturm und Drang of a
house emergency, managed this difficult moment well.
Direct after the Paris Haute Couture Week, on 7th July the house of DIOR was delighted to announce Ms. Maria Grazia Chiuri as
the new artistic director of women's haute couture, ready-to-wear and accessory
collections. Maria Grazia Chiuri leaved her role as Co-Creative Director
after 17 years with Maison VALENTINO and 8 in her role as Co-Creative
Director.
Discover the entire DIOR Autumn/Winter 2016/17 Haute Couture collection & runway show at the end of this post, and my special DIOR collection with more than 170 newest editorials on Google+ by ANDREA JANKE << please click here - enjoy! LoL, Andrea
Callian,
Montauroux, Le Lavandou, Saint-Tropez and Saint-Raphaël… Christian Dior
had always been inspired by the sunny charms of the
French Riviera. It was like a faithful mirror, a sister land that
reflected and nourished his sunny soul.
A few of the quainter ones
were being trotted out by the natives who had boarded “The Dior Express”
as it chugged through the Oxfordshire countryside, bound for Blenheim
Palace May 31st (see my Instagram-story @andreajankeofficial direct from the show). It was bucketing down, pelting, chucking it down,
raining cats and dogs doing everything in its power, in fact, to rain
on the grand, sweeping country house location of Dior’s Resort show.