DIOR SPRING-SUMMER 2024

HAUTE COUTURE

Artist Isabella Ducrot’s installation, Big Aura, adorns the walls of the room hosting the presentation of the Dior haute couture collections in the Rodin Museum gardens. For the set design of this Dior haute couture spring-summer 2024 show, twenty-three oversized dresses, some five meters high, are arranged on a composition of irregular black stripes reminiscent of weft and warp. They echo the dresses of Ottoman sultans studied by Isabella Ducrot. An abstract symbolization of the garment, which emblemizes a power that transcends the body.

For Maria Grazia Chiuri, Big Aura is what pervades haute couture, which is a perpetually fertile ground for contemplation where the reproduction of the original is never the same. Each piece is bound to be adapted to the body of the wearer, and carries its own specific aura. According to Walter Benjamin’s1 definition, aura – to which Maria Grazia Chiuri and Isabella Ducrot refer in different ways – reflects the uniqueness and authenticity of the work of art. It inscribes it in the collective memory…