When dealing with the tarot in her haute couture collection, Maria Grazia Chiuri chose to follow one of the mysterious and mystical paths that emerge in cataclysmic times, when humanity struggles to negotiate with the hands of fate. “What was good for me about the tarot is that when you’re in a difficult time, something magical can help us, to help us think better,” she said in a call from Zoom Paris. The emotional impact of pandemic isolation is one reason why it was so. “We have been alone for a long time. You think much more about many aspects of yourself and your life, ”she noted. “This is my belief: this year has changed us a lot.
For the second time, she commissioned director Matteo Garrone for a filmed interpretation. “We decided to shoot a story about this girl who walks into a castle. It is a maze that represents an inner journey. When she meets each of the (tarot) figures, she has to make a decision about her life. And, on the other hand, she knows aspects of her own personality and learns not to be afraid of the future. ”The protagonist meets the High Priestess, Temperance, Justice and Death. There are corsets with a corset with Renaissance flexion and high waist, imposing brocade robes and delicate pleated dresses. Fate arrives – apparently in a symbolic fusion of male-female identities – with a naked kiss in a bath.
Well, the ability to predict the future – which will make people want to buy in a few months – is always present in a designer’s job description. Christian Dior believed that. “He discovered the tarot in World War II, when his sister Catherine, who was part of the French Resistance, disappeared,” explained Chiuri. “In my opinion, I think he was so scared of her situation that he probably went to the tarot cards to try to find out more, to hope that she would come back. I think he was very concerned; trying to find hope in some signs. “
This poignant and little-known story of the founding of the House of Dior is about to be revealed when a book on the life of Catherine Dior by Justine Picardie is published in the fall. Chiuri accompanied the author in the research, discovering the terrible story of Catherine’s arrest in the Ravensbrück women’s concentration camp; how she consoled herself with a love of gardening when she was released and how she inspired her brother to weave flowers and femininity in her work forever.
Chiuri found another fortuitous reading of his own in the complex web of mystery and history behind the tarot. The reason for the reinvented iconography of his collection – its atmosphere of golden fantasy with a medieval Italian flavor – is that its history originated in Chiuri’s native country. Part of his inspiration came from studying the first known set of cards, known as the Visconti-Sforza deck, which was made by Bonifacio Bembo around 1400 to entertain the Duke of Milan’s family. Three centuries later, it was the French who attributed the cards mystical fortune-telling powers and renamed them as tarot. So here we are: the deep Franco-Italian fund of Dior-Chiuri that unites the collection of the season.