Christian Dior Pre-Fall 2024 Collection

The Apple TV+ show The new look climaxes with Christian Dior’s haute couture debut in Paris in 1947. A collection of voluptuous curves and prodigious use of materials that turned the fashion world upside down, set trends that would last a decade and led to real fights on the streets. As radical as the new silhouette was in post-war Europe, it was matched by Dior’s next move: the creation of an atelier in New York that would create more practical, everyday versions of its tailor-made creations for the modern American lifestyle. in the style of female designers who built their own brands in the United States, such as Claire McCardell and Elizabeth Hawes. A worthy storyline for season two perhaps.

Maria Grazia Chiuri, creative director of Dior since 2016, has her own New York story. She said this in an interview last week Fashion‘s Jose Criales-Unzueta on her first trip to the city, back “when you could still smoke on planes. “From the moment I arrived at Dior eight years ago, I wanted to come here and make this show happen,” she said. Tonight she made it happen at the Brooklyn Museum, home of the 2021 retrospective of decades and designers, “Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams.”

Before the show, in a makeshift space from the museum’s gift shop, she added: ‘New York has had a big influence on my personal style. I love sportswear, and I also love denim. I don’t think about a collection for specific moments. I’m thinking more about wardrobes, where you can mix each piece in a different way, and also what’s customizable. I’m obsessed with it because I think it’s very functional.”

Her commentary follows the fall collection she showed in February, referenced by the opening of the Miss Dior boutique in 1967 and the launch of a Paris-made ready-to-wear collection designed by one of her predecessors, Marc Bohan. Here, the A-line minidresses from the fall show were replaced by the tight-waisted silhouettes of twenty years earlier. Several of the jackets were based on designs commissioned by Marlene Dietrich for Dior, and one model wore the top hat, white vest and black ponytail that the actress wore in the famous nightclub scene from Morocco.

Like Chiuri’s style, there were plenty of other references, including simply constructed slip dresses with ornate beading of the kind she remembers from her early visit to New York – she likes a masculine top layer for accompaniment, or a thick, hand-knit sweater – and new versions of the now iconic saddle bag launched in 1999 at the height of John Galliano’s Dior tenure with tonight’s show date a collector’s item in the making.

A stars and stripes sweatshirt, worn with logo track pants, accentuated the line-up, but better were the more subtle Americanisms, like the leather aviator jacket and tweed skirt that looked like a nod to Amelia Earhart, and a cotton belted shirt dress that would do that. I’m Elizabeth Hawes delighted. Most true to the promise of unrestricted movement and ease associated with American sportswear was a little black dress with a shaped waist made of silk knit that was 100% corsetless. “I like the idea that you can rework a Dior shape with a different technique,” ​​says Chiuri. “It immediately gives you a different attitude.”

This slideshow has been edited.