Chiuri’s female-driven circus act for Dior at Paris Fashion Week, Latest Fashion News - The New Paper
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Chiuri’s female-driven circus act for Dior at Paris Fashion Week

French label's creative director plays ringmaster

Italian designer Maria Grazia Chiuri took Christian Dior to the circus on Monday with arguably her most sublimely balanced collection for the Paris haute couture label.

A troupe of all-female acrobats of all body shapes led out the show inside a retro big top - complete with harlequin-pattern floor - built in the gardens of the Rodin Museum in the centre of the French capital.

Chiuri is the first woman ever to lead the French label, and her feminism is never far away.

All her nearly 70 models wore glittery skullcaps fastened under their chins - think aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart meets commedia dell'arte character Pierrot.

But there was nothing remotely clownish about the muted elegance of the clothes, featuring lashings of embroidery and beadwork, to summon up the spirit of the circus-set 1917 ballet Parade.

Chiuri's designs mixed the romantic and the muscular, cutting her dreamy organza and tulle dresses with whip smart ringmaster and lion-tamer jackets, leather corsets and high-wire jumpsuits.

"Every look has its own personality, just like circus characters," she said, "brave, funny, happy and sad."

"The circus is a world of its own, which passes from town to town, changing each one a little as it goes - a bit like fashion week," the creator added.

The tattooed lady, that staple of the Victorian sideshow, also got a drum roll with a look inspired by Maud Wagner, America's first known female tattoo artist.

Chiuri has put her unabashed feminism at the core of the brand since she took the reins at Dior in 2016.

Previous shows have involved collaborations with women writers, musicians and choreographers.

This time, she worked with the female-led British acrobat company Mimbre.

Chiuri said she was struck by how inclusive the circus world was and how it offered "a possible equality... where beauty, origin, gender and age are no longer important. Only technique and daring matter."

It was this that inspired the collection's necklaces and bracelets of interlocking gold hands. An acrobat "puts her life in the hands of another, you have to really trust each other", she said.

Feminism was the big theme of the day on the Paris catwalks, with Italian actress and #MeToo campaigner Asia Argento taking a starring role in her Roman neighbour Antonio Grimaldi's spring/summer collection.

While Grimaldi praised her courage and "unconventional spirit", Argento said she "loved his sculptural couture". - AFP

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