The Making of the Dior Spring-Summer 2023 Haute Couture Collection

Summary

The Dior Spring-Summer 2023 Haute Couture Collection is a mesmerizing tribute to the legendary performer Josephine Baker, crafted through the lenses of history, haute couture techniques, and modern artistry. The collection masterfully embodies the spirit and elegance of the 1920s, drawing inspiration from Baker's style and the influences of cinema and cabaret. Incorporating luxurious materials like silk, velvet, and intricate embroidery, the collection showcases a harmony of past and present. Collaborations with artisans and artists, such as Mickalene Thomas, highlight the empowerment of Black women and the profound influence of pioneers like Josephine Baker and others in the field of fashion and performance, culminating in an exquisite expression of elegance and cultural homage.

Highlights

• The collection draws from 1920s mood, inspired by the iconic Josephine Baker's unique style. 🎭
• Features supple and wearable clothes with luxurious textures and intricate embroideries. ✨
• Incorporates elements of cinema and cabaret with vibrant crystals and fringes. 🎥
• Crafted with artisan techniques using materials like silk and velvet to modernize the silhouettes. 🎨
• Empowering representation of Black women through collaborations with artists like Mickalene Thomas. 🌟

Key Takeaways

• The collection celebrates Josephine Baker, showcasing her revolutionary fashion style from the 1920s. ✨
• Luxurious materials and intricate techniques highlight Dior's commitment to haute couture craftsmanship. 👗
• Mickalene Thomas collaborated to infuse the collection with a modern artistic expression and empowerment of Black women. ✊🏿

Overview

Dior's Spring-Summer 2023 Haute Couture Collection pays homage to the incredible legacy of Josephine Baker, capturing her innovative spirit and distinguished style from the 1920s. The collection leans heavily on Baker's influence, utilizing soft, wearable pieces adorned with abstract and geometric embroideries reminiscent of the era's vibrant cabaret scene. It's all about creating a sense of movement, with fringes and crystals highlighting the theatrics of fashion, while pushing the limits of luxury and elegance.

The detailed craftsmanship behind the collection is seen in the exquisite materials and techniques employed by the artisans. From shimmering sequins to handmade beaded fringes and crumpled velvet, every piece is a masterpiece of couture savoir-faire. It's an intricate dialogue between the rich history of fashion and the timeless elegance of the fabric. The collection also features collaborations with illustrious ateliers, emphasizing Dior's enduring dedication to bespoke artistry.

Artist Mickalene Thomas brings a contemporary perspective to the collection, highlighting the empowerment and legacy of Black women, including Josephine Baker. Her involvement adds layers of cultural relevance, making the collection not just a spectacle of fashion but a narrative of personal and collective transformation. The interplay of vibrant portraits and dynamic textiles creates an inspiring tableau that honors trailblazing women in fashion and the arts, making it a deeply impactful presentation.

The Making of the Dior Spring-Summer 2023 Haute Couture Collection Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 The starting point for this collection was to find several images by Joséphine Baker dressed in Dior inside our archives. She arrived in Paris in a very difficult moment, in the early twenties. So, with her work in the cabaret, in some ways through her clothes she explored and modified the stereotypical image we had at the time of a Black, African-American woman.
• 00:30 - 01:00 There a 1920s mood to the collection, based on the personality of Josephine Baker, who really created a new style of clothing. The clothes are much more supple, much easier to wear. Very often the embroideries of the twenties were either very geometrical or more abstract, with materials, sensual textiles, that glide over the skin. We presented this, it's an original swatch from the late 1920s or early 1930s,
• 01:00 - 01:30 which comes from Lesage. Maria Grazia liked it immediately. She immediately started imagining how it could be worn In the end it's a very simple piece, a small collar, but it slides over the body. The skirt opens onto a short. And it adds this sense of elegance, a sexy attitude.
• 01:30 - 02:00 Wow! It’s like knitwear. So, inside the collection there are several aspects that reference performances, such as cabaret, cinema, especially with regard to the embroideries, where there is a great use of crystals and fringes, which are synonymous with movement. We could bring the waist up. Yes, but… On the girl. On the right girl after, okay. Back then, there were these straight silhouettes, with a lot of beading.
• 02:00 - 02:30 I think it was inspired by dance costumes, and it added weight to light fabrics. Especially georgette and tulle. They become very fluid and it creates this really pretty mood. Then we have a special embroidered piece. It's a top with lots of beaded fringes. Among the beads there are these motifs created with different colors, such as zigzags, which create an interesting effect when it moves. It creates this sense of movement, which moves away from the body.
• 02:30 - 03:00 We have several pieces that have been embroidered by Chanakya. There is this gradient of materials. Here is a hammered sequin that decreases in size, with a tiny motif inside. And it’s made of metal. Sometimes we add a little rhinestone on top, and we get this vibration of colors. It forms a stripe, but it’s blurred. We have aged gold, aged silver, that are very oxidized.
• 03:00 - 03:30 Here, only the end has fringe, in the same tones as the embroidery. So, it all mixes together, it's full of life. It's glass, yes. Yes, it's glass. It looks metallic when you see it like that. Inside, it’s silver. Yes, it’s oxidized. It’s oxidized. Which creates these nuances. The embroideries are very ethereal and shimmering, a bit like on stage. For this ensemble, in a mesh of metallic beads
• 03:30 - 04:00 the embroidery is not applied to the fabric. Instead, it’s really a kind of crochet that moulds itself to the body of the person wearing it. Superb! Superb. To hide the transparency, we also made lingerie. We worked in collaboration with Atelier Cadolle. It's the last remaining workshop in Paris that still makes made-to-measure lingerie, just like the haute couture here. My name is Poupie Cadolle. The house of Dior showed me an archive piece from the fifties,
• 04:00 - 04:30 and it totally inspired me. It's really a revival of the smocking technique. Smocking is made with elastic threads that are designed to make ruched fabrics that stretch. That is, you can stretch the smocked part and make it flat, but it has to remain gathered when it is placed on the woman’s body. It needs to have a certain thickness and puffiness so it can stretch enough to go all around the body. Originally it was a polyester bi-stretch fabric, and once it was gathered it became coarse, it looked rustic.
• 04:30 - 05:00 So, we experimented with a lot of different fabrics and finally decided to make it in silk. And, of course, with silk… it's always perfect. We developed a fabric with Aurélia Leblanc that we’ll connect to our net embroidery. A fabric with little diamonds, little lozenges. I’m working on a deep black, quilted style honeycomb fabric.
• 05:00 - 05:30 We used two types of materials. A cotton for the base, which is black with a little bit of a light effect. And for the lozenge motifs, it’s a viscose yarn that’s a little more puffy. The passage of the yarns is done one by one each time. It was very important to have contrasts of blacks, with one that’s a little more dry looking, more matte, and then blacks that are much shinier, almost as if the material was liquid. Here, we’re going to remove the fabric from the loom You have to cut the warp threads once the work is done. We will soften all the material. The small, quilted parts inflate once out of the loom,
• 05:30 - 06:00 and we finally discover the body of the fabric. We developed a beautiful tuxedo using the ‘Bar’ jacket as the starting point, worn with a wide trouser that tapers at the ankle, a bit like how Josephine Baker would have worn it at the time. Woven fabrics are typically used for tailoring because they have a structure and hold perfectly. The feel is almost like a lamé, very ’30s. It is a fabric that has life to it and that moves with the body. One example of extraordinary atelier techniques
• 06:00 - 06:30 is this white embroidered jacket. It is a true feat of geometry and savoir-faire. This little jacket, which features a technique from the 19th century that was popular in the thirties, represents the quintessence of craftsmanship. And it’s Paloma who made that. We made bias rouleaux. They are kind of spaghetti strip. We turn them inside out so that they’re all perfectly identical. Next, our team of embroiderers creates a grid.
• 06:30 - 07:00 Then we embroider the inside. It’s a stitch we found in some old books. It’s called the spider stitch. We take an iridescent silk thread and we create diagonals. Then we make this little circle in the middle that is always identical. There’s a braid that goes around the edge of the piece. The passementerie is based on whirls of 4mm thick, bias-cut strips that form a button. Bit by bit, we will assemble the front, the small side panel and the back, with one bias rouleau
• 07:00 - 07:30 mounted on top of another to create a seamless effect. It looks like it’s been shaped from a single piece. So, we have a grid that takes the shape of the garment. The squares are smaller here and bigger there, to mould to the chest.   It’s the same at the back. This is true couture craftsmanship. We found a lot of archive photos of Josephine Baker that inspired us, as well as materials from the twenties.
• 07:30 - 08:00 Velvet, for example. To create this vintage feel, we developed a technique with Hongbo, in our flou ateliers, where the velvet is crumpled by hand. It’s like this, yeah. Easy to wear. Easy to wear. Easy to wear, easy to go. For the crushed velvet effect, Maria Grazia wanted something natural. We place the pleats on the table. Then we take the iron without the soleplate, very hot. Then first we choose the sense of the velvet and then,
• 08:00 - 08:30 from top to bottom, we smooth it with the iron. It must not be uniform, it has to be a bit like taking a brush and painting on the velvet. Then we flatten it out again to see if we like the pattern, and to check whether it creates the same effect at the back. It has to have the same rhythm. We can add a bit more. Would that be possible? Yes, we can. We can always do this kind of effect. It’s always interesting. To have this effect of … Yes. Yes, shine.  Okay. We can do that. We have three velvet silhouettes and the effect is completely different each time.
• 08:30 - 09:00 What is interesting is that each person creating their dress creates their own crushed effects. And this is a different effect by someone else. The reflection is beautiful, it looks like tree bark. We realized that, even with the classic haute couture fabrics, once they’re creased in this way, they take on a much more modern aspect. So, we did the same thing with satin.
• 09:00 - 09:30 For the first step, we create these ripples using our fingers. In the fabric like this, using regular creases. It has to look a bit... a bit like broken glass. Above all, it has to look irregular, then we’ll make it look a bit more harmonious later. We use the iron without the soleplate, which creates a shiny effect on the fabric. It will create these lustrous interplays.
• 09:30 - 10:00 That’s the first step. Then we start to see these shiny aspects appear, like this. Then we'll stay on the fabric a bit longer, like this, to reinforce these effects, just with the heat, without steam. That’s the first effect. Then for the second step, we flatten out it again. There are three kinds of fabric: a matte satin, a metallic silk jacquard, and a metallic fabric.
• 10:00 - 10:30 It’s especially for the dresses that are “classic,” let’s say, with a harmonious shape.  It infuses the fabric with a bit of energy.   For me, the crumpled effect has really modernized the silhouette. Yes. Gorgeous. Super! Magnificent. What I find to be incredible, not just with Josephine Baker, but also Marlene Dietrich, a great friend of Dior,
• 10:30 - 11:00 is that through their work, these actresses could be an inspiration for women in their use of fashion and performances to portray themselves differently in their lives. I had the pleasure to start collaborating with Mickalene Thomas in 2020 for my Cruise show in Marrakech. Yes, I know, it’s good to be here. Oh wow, look at that!
• 11:00 - 11:30 Yes. It looks so gorgeous. Oh my God! I’m a multimedia artist. I like to bring an elevated sense of empowerment around black women. Look at Josephine Baker. Ahhh! The process was a lot of printing in New York, and then embroidery in India. The colors come from… I don’t know, I was thinking of this black and white film, and you put this technicolor on it, in that sense of the CYMK.
• 11:30 - 12:00 All of it comes to the conceptual idea of the film and the television, and how we see these images, when you sort of zoom in the micro, macro. I love how it goes from the transition of color, you know. Going from the yellow to the black and grays. Just beautiful, right? For this set, she created this incredible gallery of women
• 12:00 - 12:30 who have permanently changed the perception of women of color. Women from different horizons, and also who held important positions which, in the beginning, were difficult to obtain. You have Nina Simone, Marpessa Dawn, who starred in <i>Black Orpheus</i>. Lena Horne, Josephine Baker. Wow, just look how beautiful that one over there is, too. What you see here is a collection of portraits of 13 women
• 12:30 - 13:00 who have become pioneers in their field, despite resistance and rejection. They were activists. They spoke out against sexism and racism, and they put a lot of risk on the line. You have someone like Eartha Kitt who, early in her career, spoke out against the Vietnam War at the White House. And therefore, she was blacklisted in America. She actually was able to come to a place here,
• 13:00 - 13:30 in France, to get work. There are many, many women who deserve this presentation. But, for me, it was also important for the selection to really think about the connection between them. You have Ophelia giving Helen Williams her first modeling job, and then you have her relationship with Lena Horne. And the same with Eartha Kitt and, you know, Nina Simone. There was this great sort of energy and community
• 13:30 - 14:00 that these women had as a sisterhood. I’m not an actress or a model, but they were mirror images for me. When I think of the glamour and the embroidery, it’s thinking about adornment and how, as Black people, we’re constantly having to sort of, as you will, pass or pose our mask, right?  And so that brings these women into the light of a state of leisure or elevated state.
• 14:00 - 14:30 And so that’s what these are doing, bringing you in and connecting all of them to, sort of, this conceptual idea of beauty. I thought it was really beautiful! I was talking to one of the models backstage and she told me that it was, like, the first Black ballerina in the French ballet. I had no idea, but I thought that that was incredibly beautiful and powerful to show, like, strong Black women. To see so many of us in the show, too, was just amazing. And, the hairstyle is so empowering this year. Like, I love it.
• 14:30 - 15:00 Mickalene Thomas went beyond the technical, she really explored this idea of “glamour.” It’s incredible work, which is also very inspiring for the women of the future.