The story goes like this: A bag crafted from the supplest of leathers and stitched to emulate Napoleon III chairs, designer by former Dior creative director Gianfranco Ferré, was gifted to Diana, Princess of Wales, by ex-French first lady Bernadette Chirac in 1995. It wasn't until 1996 that the bag was named Lady Dior, in homage to Princess Diana's irreverent style.
Gregg Bleakney
This icon has continued to reinvent itself season after season, year after year. However, this 2019 marks the first time 11 female artists of different generations and nationalities have been chosen to reinterpret the Lady Dior bag, and champions unconventional femininity with the most unexpected of savoir-faire.
Meet the talented collaborators behind the project:
Janaina Tschäpe, USA
Peter Ash Lee
The German-born artist’s interdisciplinary spans painting, drawing, photography, video and sculpture. She’s inspired by the themes of water and plants, and the myths and mysterious surrounding aquatic beings Tschäpe’s universe of sublime forms shift between representation, fantasy and abstraction. It is her fascination with corals that informed her reinterpretation of the Lady Dior bag and imagined it as a fragment of a mental landscape, an exquisite escape into the ocean depths. Like an imaginary and moving journey embodied by a fantastical and luminous living creature of the abyss.
