'Girl with a Pearl Earring' - the VALENTINO collection featuring pearls, midnight blue, blood red, lace and ermine, for Fall/Winter 2013/14 Ready-to-Wear Valentino's creative directors Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli aimed to bring the paintings of the 'Dutch Golden Age' of Flemish artists like Rembrandt and Johannes Vermeer to life. Inspired by the unsettling beauty of 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' which is one of Vermeer's masterworks, the graceful and restrained collection is unveiled in a new clip which takes us behind the scenes on the campaign, shot by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin.
Featuring mostly newcomers including Maud Welzen, Kati Nescher, Magdalena Jasek, Irina Kravchenko, Sam Rollinson, Erika Labanauskaite, Tamara Weijenberg, Laura Kampman,
Nouk Torsing and Sasha Luss. The girls pose next to still-life images
that reflect the Flemish style including flowers, fruit and feathers
surrounding the season’s accessories.
'This season, as
Piccioli explained in a collection preview, the designers had been
looking at the “calm and serene portraits of women,” by the Flemish Old
Masters (Vermeer in particular) and their reinterpretation by such
contemporary artists as Hendrik Kerstens. “We wanted to catch the same
spirit of private sensuality,” he explained, “something very spiritual
and poetic women as new Madonnas.”'
Versailles holds on to its secrets very well. At its heart is to be found a mysterious world, peopled with flower-women that only artists Inez Van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin could capture. For the second installment of "Secret Garden", they pick up the historical thread that ties Versailles to Dior. Discover their film here.
They had left her in the pathways of the traditional French parkland.
And it's deep within the forests of the royal demesne, among the
centuries-old trees of Versailles, that the artists Inez Van Lamsweerde
and Vinoodh Matadin found the model Daria Strokous once again. A modern
Marie-Antoinette, a stately lady in Dior, she moves toward a world of
elegance and refinement, crossing the marble hallways of the Grand
Trianon and the shaded groves of the vast parkland. Ethereal, radiant, royal, in pursuit of her ideal: a realm of poetry and
color, worthy of the painting "Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe" by Edouard
Manet. Before the camera lens of Inez and Vinoodh, Versailles hums with
well-kept secrets. Secrets whispered by flower-women, by women in Dior.
The Château de Versailles, emblem of Dior's tradition, hosts a new tale which brings to life the Dior Fall 2013 collection. The
chateau and its park abound with well-kept secrets. The heart of the
royal land conceals an extraordinary world of poetry and color: in the
depth of its mysterious woods a secret garden blooms out of sight,
inhabited by flower-women. From the Petit Trianon to the enchanted
forest, Versailles becomes the picturesque backdrop of a dreamlike tale.
"From Friday, May 31th until June 3rd, the Paris' Grand Palais
museum was transformed into a beautiful garden to welcome the
exhibition ‘L’Art du Jardin’. The House of Dior actually exposed there with a
stunning installation ..."
A look back at the fall-winter 2007 haute couture show, where all the house's history was brought to glorious life in the Orangerie of the Château
de Versailles ...
With its Bar jackets, Corolle
dresses, sweeping bias cuts, bows tied at the neck, brazenly protruding
busts, its extravagant volumes, the fashion show to fete sixty years of
the house of Dior was an awe-inspiring ode to the founder's creative
genius. It's name suggested as much - Le Bal des Artistes - a reference
to the man who frequented some of the greatest soirées of his time and
who was the close friend of Christian Bérard, Jean Cocteau, Marc
Chagall, Colette, and many, many more. "Artistes", too, because among
the key looks in the show, those worn by the famed supermodels were
drawn from some of the greatest works in the history of art - such as
Shalom Harlow and her homage to Michelangelo, Linda Evangelista's
couture take on Caravaggio, Stella Tenant sampling El Greco, Amber
Valetta channeling Renoir. Taking place in the Orangerie of the Château
de Versailles, the show forging a direct link to the pomp and splendor
the château incarnates. It was here that, at the instigation of Louis
XIV, French luxury first saw the light of day. A luxury of opulence,
detail and savoir-faire; a luxury that defined couture, the quintessence
of femininity, such as would be seen again in the elegant players of
the Belle Epoque period, with their whittled waists, bustles, their
rustling gowns and aristocratic allure.
The early 20th century and the image of his mother, in all her refined
finery, would prove a catalyst of incomparable importance for Christian
Dior's style, and these childhood memories become the impetus for
creating, in 1947, almost a half-century later, what posterity would dub
the New Look. It's this same compulsion that pulses through this anniversary fashion show. Versailles,
the 17th century château; the spirit of the 18th century, Christian
Dior's favorite period; the start of the 20th century and his formative
years; the end of the war and the Dior revolution; 2007 and this
anniversary collection. Uniting all these points on the timeline is a
single collection, a singular vision of woman, a single name: Dior.
Encompassing theatrical harlequins, Spanish infantas, couture Cupids,
Seville widows, the looks weren't just clothes, they were characters.
The pleats, the draping, the jaw-dropping embroideries, all conjuring up
the spectacular balls of the Ancien Régime, and a sparkling
gorgeousness that Versailles hasn't seen since the days of the Sun King.
Welcome to Dior's secret garden
Before the camera lens of Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, the
looks from the fall 2012 collection are brought to glorious life. In a
deserted Versailles, as if plucked from a fantasy, the model Daria
Strokous invites you to follow her on a wondrous path that winds through
the Galerie des Glaces, through the palace's endless interconnecting
salons, as far as the grand tree-lined walks that sweep through the
classic parkland à la française.
Along the way she's joined by fellow models Melissa Stasiuk and Xiao Wen
Ju for a dreamlike fashion show where Versailles is transformed into
Christian Dior's secret garden, his emblematic château. D'or et Dior.
