Exclusive installation of paper flowers in the Gardens room, which displays flower dresses alongside artworks from Monet to Marc Quinn. Photo credit: Dior
The space is covered with thousands of delicate white paper tendrils and vines draping down from overhead. Beneath them stand dresses in all inspiration of flowers: from a chiffon afternoon dress embroidered with cotton daisies to one couture cocktail dress covered in little green feather sprigs. Facing these dresses on one side of the wall, a Monet iris painting is hanging as if in conversation with the gowns.
This is the Dior Garden, one of many rooms in the 32,000-square-foot ‘Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams’ exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. Celebrating 70 years of Maison Dior, it’s a big and bold staging of the brand’s story, and underneath that, a subtle retrospective study of the business in fashion. With over 300 haute couture dresses (many from the museum’s own collection) and 700 accessories across 23 themes curated by the museum’s director Olivier Gabet and Florence Müller, curator of textile art and fashion at the Denver Art Museum, it’s a one-hour minimum walk-through show. The superlatives continue ... welcome to the largest Dior exhibition ever held, and the first in France since 1987.
Exhibiting Miss Dior
Italian actress Giulietta Masina opening the limited-edition of Diorissimo EDP at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival. Photo credit: Collection Christian Dior Parfums
Deserving its own mini exhibition is Dior’s love, adventures, and creations of perfume. As soon as he built the House of Dior, he knew it was not complete without a scent to match the complexities and confidence of the New Look woman. Monsieur Dior immediately set up a second company and launched his first fragrance and now a signature, Miss Dior.
Before Natalie Portman, Grace Kelly, Sophia Loren, and Giulietta Masina were faces of the now-legendary Miss Dior, there was only one woman that drove the inspiration behind the scent: Catherine Dior, the couturier’s beloved sister. She’s the original Miss Dior of Miss Dior, someone the couturier viewed as courageous, chic, and embodied the scent. Photos of Catherine and Château de La Colle Noire, where Monsieur Dior rediscovered the glorious scents of Provence, are displayed in this perfume-themed room. Also on display are iconic floral Miss Dior dresses: from the first one created in 1949 to Simons’s “pointillist” design and the most recent Chiuri embroidered creation.
