Maria Grazia Chiuri is, needless to say, one of the biggest names in fashion and
many times considered controversial for the fusion between feminism and
fashion, as she says: “The new generation has raised big questions about gender,
race, environment and cultures that we have to reflect in fashion” and that’s
exactly what she’s been doing for her whole life.
Appointed as Dior’s first woman creative director in 2016, Chiuri is the creator of
the infamous “We should all be feminists”, “Why have there been no great
women artists?” and “C’est non, non, non et non” T-shirts; this time around she
didn’t play safe either.
The show took place in the Tuileries Garden, on which Dior and the Louvre are
collaborating for its revegetation program, the whole structure is installed in
collaboration with conceptual artist Claire Fontaine and based on the writings
from Carla Lonzi, art critic and feminist activist. From the ceiling hang neon signs
that read:
Women’s love is unpaid labour
According to The New York Times,if every woman on the planet was to be paid
minimum wage for the chores that are considered “female” they would have
earned 10,9 trillion dollars last year alone.
When women strike the world stops: Winking at the slogan created in 2018 for the International Women’s Strike movement Feminine beauty is a ready-made
Claire Fontaine takes inspiration from Marcel Duchamp, which coined the name
“ready-made” : everyday object selected and designated as art. Implying that
women’s beauty is naturally a work of art.
Patriarchy= climate emergency: As Greta Thunberg affirmed in “Why We Strike Again”, the environmental crisis is the consequence of patriarchal systems of oppression that have created and
fueled it.
“We are all clitoridian women”: once again a big inspiration for Chiuri, this is the title of the article that Claire Fontaine wrote about Carla Lonzi, which summarizes Lonzi’s contribution to the
feminist movement.
Patriarchy = repression
Women raise the upraising
Women are the moon that moves the tides Consent
The floor is covered by a reinterpretation of Claire Fontaine’s piece “Newsfloor”
created by countless pages from the daily “Le Monde”; its role is to visualize the
external happenings inserting themselves into fashion and changing it. (Marco Giuliani)
