The tree of life, a small-format work by Ukrainian artist Olesia Trofymenko, is the starting point for
Dior
's creative director , Maria Grazia Chiuri, in her
new haute couture collection FW 2022/23.
Small stitch painting and embroidery give emotional consistency to that image, a symbol of reference for different religions and distant mythologies.
The tree of life connects all forms of creation: it supports the heavens and connects them through branches and roots with the earth and the subsoil.
An image, that of Trofymenko, inscribed in the stylistic features common to the folklore of many territories.
Fashion has always been fascinated by popular costumes, for that need for decoration that is the origin of every artistic experience.
It is in that territory of apparently immutable tradition like couture and therefore revolutionary that Chiuri contemplates fashion through the filter of art.
The collection is a sequence of pieces that resonate with
folklore imaginaries
which innervates all cultures and puts them in dialogue without prejudice.
They are absolute objects that draw silhouettes imprinted with those forms of fashion that are the result of common customs, declined in the timeless dimension of couture.
The branches, the trunk, the roots of the tree of life.
Shape that escapes control to expand freely in many of the garments thanks to
the explosion of embroideries
, composed of cotton, silk and rope threads.
The shades of beig
and are sometimes illuminated by a point of black or blue.
Embroideries that require time and patience on cotton, wool crepe, silk and cashmere fabrics.
Patchwork dresses
composed of bronze and black lace and guipure details.
Then patchworks that become memories in the composition of domestic materials.
While the silk muslin of the long and light dresses comes close to the body thanks to the virtuosity of the smock stitch.
The silhouette of the New Look is reinterpreted in the materials: the structure of the Bar jacket is covered by a vertical smock-effect fabric, and the skirt is structured in the ribbons that hold it in the upper part, forming a tail.
The pleats of the skirts sometimes open up in gathered panels: they make the Dior silhouette explode.
Dungaree dresses with corolla skirts parade, worn over transparent shirts.
Long dresses in tartan or lace.
Handmade loom fabrics flaunt the precious irregular texture in dresses that exclude the hem.
Large trench coats in embroidered silk or cotton protect long dresses.
Shaping materials and shapes in that reflective dimension of the atelier, porous to the social reality in which we live.
Remember what it means to be human today.
They are the gestures handed down, learned and always handed down, those that in repetition become litany and prayer.
The tree of life is a call, a warning to recover traditions and restore balance, even if only momentarily.