Dior Talks

Welcome to this first episode of Dior Talks. This podcast series will explore the connections between Creative Director of Women’s collections Maria Grazia Chiuri and contemporary women artists and curators.  This opening episode is devoted to Maria Grazia Chiuri herself. She is recorded on a leisurely stroll through the Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris and later in her Dior office, in conversation with writer, curator, art historian – and series host – Katy Hessel.  Maria Grazia Chiuri was born in Rome, Italy, in 1964, into a progressive family that instilled in her the understanding that she could accomplish anything to which she set her mind. Her mother ran a dressmaking atelier, so from an early age she was exposed to fashion and the entrepreneurial spirit of women. This would be amplified through the encouragement of the five Fendi sisters, for whom she worked as a designer for nine years. 17 years at Valentino followed, the last few spent as joint creative director, before she joined Christian Dior in 2016 as Creative Director of the Women’s collections.  Having grown up in an era of widespread feminist activism in Italy, at Dior she has given free rein to her passion for feminist theory, especially in its overlap with art. Regarding t-shirts as incomparable communication platforms, from the first look of her first show they have broadcast messages that have disrupted the fashion system and introduced a new generation to a broad range of feminist thinkers and doers.  Her collections have been inspired by female artists such as Niki de Saint Phalle and Georgia O’Keeffe, and she has collaborated directly with others, such as Penny Slinger, Tomaso Binga and Judy Chicago. In a touching and intimate tribute, she cites her own daughter as her feminist hero.  Discover a selection of works: Dior Autumn-Winter 2020-2021 show scenography, by Claire Fontaine: https://www.dior.com/en_int/womens-fashion/ready-to-wear-shows/autumn-winter-2020-2021-ready-to-wear-show  Dior Spring-Summer 2020 Haute Couture show scenography, by Judy Chicago: https://www.dior.com/en_int/womens-fashion/haute-couture-shows/spring-summer-2020-haute-couture-show  Dior Autumn-Winter 2019-2020 show scenography, by Tomaso Binga: https://www.dior.com/diormag/en_int/article/30399  Giardino dei Tarocchi: http://www.giardinodeitarocchi.it  Le Cyclop by Jean Tinguely: https://www.lecyclop.com 

Welcome to this episode of Dior Talks. This podcast series will explore the connections between Creative Director of Women’s collections Maria Grazia Chiuri and contemporary women artists and curators.  In this episode, Katy Hessel, a writer, curator and art historian, speaks with Judy Chicago, the American first-generation feminist artist, educator and writer. Her collaboration with Maria Grazia Chiuri on the Dior Spring-Summer 2020 haute couture show resulted in both the realization of a large-scale work planned since the 1970s and the creation of new work in the process. Born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1939, to a mother who fostered a love of art in her children, a young Judy (she would choose the surname Chicago in 1970) took classes at the Art Institute of Chicago before attending UCLA.  One of only a small number of women to gain a level of recognition in the 1960s L.A. art scene, her work would evolve from resembling that of her contemporaries to acting as a uniquely powerful mirror of her feminist beliefs. To further this, she founded the first feminist art program in the US, encouraging her students to find their identity as women artists.  Her work embraces techniques ranging from fiberglass sculpture and pyrotechnics to embroidery and the use of auto spray painting, from wall pieces to huge installations. Having overcome what amounted to a decades-long stream of institutional misogyny from the male-dominated art world – most noticeably following the creation of her landmark and rightfully iconic feminist artwork ‘The Dinner Party’, now on permanent display at the Brooklyn Museum – she has seen her extensive catalogue of work rediscovered and reappraised in recent years, as the world has finally caught up with its pioneering importance.  Discover a selection of works: The Dinner Party, 1974-1979 https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/dinner_party Fireworks, 1968-1974 https://www.judychicago.com/gallery/atmospheresfireworks/artwork/ Flesh Garden series, 1971 https://blogs.getty.edu/pacificstandardtime/explore-the-era/worksofart/big-blue-pink-from-the-flesh-gardens-series/ Pasadena Life Savers, 1970 https://nmwa.org/works/pasadena-lifesavers-red-5

This third episode of the ‘Feminist Art’ series focuses on Paola Ugolini, an independent curator and critic. She has curated the Dior-sponsored “Io dico Io - I say I” at the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome, a major exhibition devoted to the work of Italian feminist artists, running from March 24 to June 21, 2020. Born and based in Rome, Paola Ugolini experienced the turbulent decade of the 1970s in the Italian capital as a teenager. With demonstrations a seemingly daily occurrence, she was exposed to political and, more importantly, feminist activism at a formative moment, which shaped her view of art as a powerful means of expression.  A close friend of Maria Grazia Chiuri, the tradition of feminist theory and art has been an integral part of her work. From her fascination with performance and body art to embroidery and video, the mediums embraced by women to self-represent and make their voices heard have gone from once being highly experimental to now being part of the mainstream. An important part of her role, as she sees it, is to bring such work, and the messages it contains, to a new generation of women, and men.  In an absorbing and enlightening exchange, she chats with Katy Hessel, a writer, curator and art historian, at the Palais de Tokyo contemporary art museum in Paris.  Discover a selection of works: Feminism in Italian Contemporary Art, exhibition at Richard Saltoun Gallery, October-November 2019 (London) https://www.richardsaltoun.com/exhibitions/78-feminism-in-italian-contemporary-art-silvia-giambrone-and-marinella-senatore/overview/ The Body as Language: Women and Performance, exhibition at Richard Saltoun Gallery, October-November 2015 (London) https://www.richardsaltoun.com/exhibitions/44-the-body-as-language-women-and-performance/overview/ Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Your Body is a Battleground), 1989 https://www.thebroad.org/art/barbara-kruger/untitled-your-body-battleground Carol Rama (1918-2015) : https://www.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/view/carol-rama-antibodies   http://www.mam.paris.fr/fr/expositions/exposition-la-passion-selon-carol-rama Hannah Wilke, S.O.S.- Starfication Object Series, 1974-82 https://www.moma.org/collection/works/102432 Helen Chadwick (1953-1996) https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/helen-chadwick-2253 Ketty La Rocca (1938-1976) https://www.moma.org/artists/65088?locale=en#works Corpo a corpo, Body to Body, exhibition at Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, June-September 2017 (Rome) https://lagallerianazionale.com/en/mostra/corpo-a-corpo-body-to-body/ Carolee Schneemann, Interior Scroll, 1975 https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/schneemann-interior-scroll-p13282 This episode was recorded at Palais Tokyo (Paris): https://www.palaisdetokyo.com/en

Welcome to this fourth episode of Dior Talks. This podcast series will explore the connections between Creative Director of Women’s collections Maria Grazia Chiuri and contemporary women artists and curators.  In this episode, series host Katy Hessel, the London-based writer, curator and art historian, talks to Tracey Emin, one of the pre-eminent figures of contemporary art in the UK. In 2017, Emin, whose practice has always been firmly yet uniquely framed within the history of feminist discourse, created a specially commissioned work, Should Love Last, for the Dior pop-up store at 44 Avenue Montaigne in Paris. Tracey Emin CBE is one of the generations of Young British Artists (YBAs) who came to prominence in the early 1990s and whose work changed the landscape and language of contemporary art in the UK. Yet the immediacy and autobiographical narrative of her work has always set her slightly apart from her contemporaries. Working in painting, drawing, video and installation, and also photography, needlework and sculpture, she has always used her own life and childhood as her subject matter, to reassess the nature of “women’s work” and the position of women, and of femininity, within the frame of artistic expression.  Emin was born in 1963 and grew up in Margate, a seaside town on the Kent Coast, and her childhood there, particularly her teenage years, form a powerful source of inspiration for her work. In 1999 she was nominated for the prestigious Turner Prize in London and in 2007 she represented Great Britain at the Venice Biennial. She is a panelist and speaker and has lectured widely, including at the V&A Museum. In 2011, she was appointed professor of Drawing at the Royal Academy. Discover a selection of works: Tracey Emin, Should Love Last, 2016 (Dior store, 44 avenue Montaigne, Paris) https://www.dior.com/diormag/en_gb/article/interview-tracey-emin Tracey Emin, The Mother, 2018 (The Museum Island, Oslo) https://www.themuseumisland.com/en/artist/tracey-emin/ Tracey Emin, Hate and Power Can be a Terrible Thing, 2004 https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/emin-hate-and-power-can-be-a-terrible-thing-t11891 https://www.jessicahemmings.com/tracey-emin-stitching-extreme/ Tracey Emin, A Fortnight of Tears, Exhibition at the White Cube gallery (February- April 2019, London) https://whitecube.com/exhibitions/exhibition/tracey_emin_bermondsey_2019 Louise Bourgeois with Tracey Emin, Do Not Abandon Me, 2009-2010 https://www.moma.org/collection/works/153422 Bow Down : Women in Art History, a podcast by Jennifer Higgie https://frieze.com/article/bow-down-podcast-women-art-history

Welcome to this fifth episode of Dior Talks. This podcast series will explore the connections between Creative Director of Women’s collections Maria Grazia Chiuri and contemporary women artists and curators.  In this episode, series host Katy Hessel, a London-based curator, writer and art-historian, talks to Tomaso Binga about her long and influential career as a feminist conceptual artist, in the wonderful setting of the seminal Galleria Il Mascherino in Rome. Tomaso Binga was born Bianca Pucciarelli in Salerno, southern Italy, in 1931. At the age of 18 she left her hometown and moved to Rome and she started making art in the 1960s. She was first asked to exhibit her work in a gallery setting in 1971 and was initially wary of exposure, preferring to leave art world recognition to her critic husband. However, she overcame her reticence and proceeded to create and exhibit a series of highly controversial and provocative works. The alter ego came about in the early 70s, when she decided to take a man’s name as a statement about the deeply ingrained sexism of the art world and indeed the world at large. The name was an homage to Marinetti, the surrealist poet whose work has been a lifelong inspiration for Binga. ‘Tomaso Binga’ was created as a challenge to men and their hegemonic status. Binga is best known for her seminal Alphabet works of the 1970s, in which she used her own naked body to form the letters of the alphabet – which was used as part of the scenography of the Dior Autumn-Winter 2019 show – and her 1977 performance, Just Married, when Bianca Menna married her male pseudonym Tomaso Binga.  She has been a major influence on generations of women artists. She was a Professor at the prestigious Academy of Fine Arts in Frosinone and is a vice president of the Filiberto Menna Foundation in Salerno. She has had exhibitions and participated in festivals and performances throughout Italy and internationally, including the 38th Venice Biennale, the 14th São Paulo Biennial, and the Biennale de Lyon. Discover a selection of works: Tomaso Binga, Feminist Works, 1970-1980, Galleria Mascherino (March – April 2020), Rome https://flash---art.it/2020/03/tomaso-binga-feminist-works-1970-1980-galleria-mascherino-roma/ Tomaso Binga: A Silenced Victory, Mimosa House, London (September- December 2019) https://mimosahouse.co.uk/tomaso-binga-2 Romana Loda, curator (-2010) http://dspace-unipr.cineca.it/bitstream/1889/3265/1/PERNA-mostre.pdf Mirella Bentivoglio, poet and curator (1922-2017) https://nmwa.org/explore/artist-profiles/mirella-bentivoglio https://www.centrepompidou.fr/cpv/ressource.action?param.id=FR_R-86fcbd9ef0ef89d5cca5d787204b4d91&param.idSource=FR_P-86fcbd9ef0ef89d5cca5d787204b4d91 Verita Monselles, photographer (1929-2005) https://www.centrephotogeneve.ch/en/artist/verita-monselles/ https://archivioraam.org/en/artist/verita-monselles Verita Monselles, Ecce Homo, 1976 https://www.artribune.com/attualita/2016/02/dialoghi-di-estetica-raffaella-perna/attachment/verita-monselles-ecce-homo-ii-serie-1976/  Tomaso Binga, Dior Autumn-Winter 2019-2020, February 2019 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQNTDiPoN7g

Benvenuti a questo quinto episodio di Dior Talks. Questa serie esplora la relazione tra  il Direttore Creativo delle collezioni donna, Maria Grazia Chiuri, e artiste e curatrici contemporanee. In questo episodio, Katy Hessel, una curatrice, scrittrice e storica dell’arte con base a Londra, parla con Tomaso Binga dell’inizio della sua carriera come artista concettuale femminista in occasione dell’apertura della sua mostra alla Galleria Il Mascherino di Roma.  Tomaso Binga è lo pseudonimo di Bianca Pucciarelli, nata a Salerno nel 1931. A 18 anni lascia la sua città natale per spostarsi a Roma dove, negli anni 60, inizia la sua carriera artistica. Le viene chiesto di esporre le sue opere nel 1971, dopo un attimo di esitazione, inizia a creare ed esporre una serie di opere considerate controverse e provocanti dalla società dell’epoca. Il suo alter ego nasce negli anni 70 quando decide di adottare un nome maschile per denunciare il sessismo del mondo dell’arte e della società italiana. L’unione tra Bianca e Tomaso viene celebrata tramite la performance del 1977, Oggi Spose, dove Bianca Pucciarelli sposa il suo alter ego maschile. Il nome è un omaggio al celebre esponente del Futurismo, Tommaso Marinetti, una fonte di ispirazione per Binga. Il nome Tomaso Binga viene creato come sfida al controllo egemonico degli uomini. Una delle opere più celebri dell’artista è il suo Alfabeto creato negli anni 70, dove il corpo nudo di Binga forma le lettere dell’alfabeto. È questo stesso alfabeto che viene reinterpretato per la scenografia della sfilata Dior Autunno-Inverno 2019. Bianca Pucciarelli è professoressa all’Accademia di Belle Arti di Frosinone e vice presidente della Fondazione Filiberto Menna a Salerno. Le sue opere sono state esposte sia in Itali che all’estero in occasione della 38esima edizione della Biennale di Venezia, la 14esima edizione della Biennale di San Paolo e la Biennale di Lione.  Le opere discusse in questo episodio includono:   Tomaso Binga, Feminist Works, 1970-1980, Galleria Mascherino (March – April 2020), Rome https://flash---art.it/2020/03/tomaso-binga-feminist-works-1970-1980-galleria-mascherino-roma/  Tomaso Binga: A Silenced Victory, Mimosa House, London (September- December 2019) https://mimosahouse.co.uk/tomaso-binga-2  Romana Loda, curator (-2010) http://dspace-unipr.cineca.it/bitstream/1889/3265/1/PERNA-mostre.pdf  Mirella Bentivoglio, poet and curator (1922-2017) https://nmwa.org/explore/artist-profiles/mirella-bentivoglio https://www.centrepompidou.fr/cpv/ressource.action?param.id=FR_R-86fcbd9ef0ef89d5cca5d787204b4d91&param.idSource=FR_P-86fcbd9ef0ef89d5cca5d787204b4d91  Verita Monselles, photographer (1929-2005) https://www.centrephotogeneve.ch/en/artist/verita-monselles/ https://archivioraam.org/en/artist/verita-monselles  Verita Monselles, Ecce Homo, 1976 https://www.artribune.com/attualita/2016/02/dialoghi-di-estetica-raffaella-perna/attachment/verita-monselles-ecce-homo-ii-serie-1976/   Tomaso Binga, Dior Autumn-Winter 2019-2020, February 2019 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQNTDiPoN7g

Welcome to this sixth episode of Dior Talks. This podcast series will explore the connections between Creative Director of Women’s collections Maria Grazia Chiuri and contemporary women artists and curators.  In this episode, series host Katy Hessel, a London-based curator, writer and art historian, speaks to Penny Slinger, the British-born, California-based artist, about her long career and her recent Dior collaborations with Maria Grazia Chiuri. Specially for the Dior autumn-winter 2019 haute couture show, Slinger designed a unique and exquisite gilded doll’s house as a mystical yet pertinent work of wearable apparel, based on the form of the iconic Dior hôtel particulier at 30 Avenue Montaigne. She was inspired by the building, by each step of its iconic staircase, which, for the show, she transformed and transported to her own surreal universe. This scenography, which celebrates the Dior heritage, the strength and beauty of natural elements, and the diversity and uniqueness of women, subtly references her organic and resolutely feminist output. Penny Slinger was born in London in 1947, and studied at Chelsea School of Art in the late 60s. Declining an offer to undertake a master’s degree at the Royal College of Art, she chose instead to launch her artistic practice. Her work was included in a group exhibition at London’s renowned Institute of Contemporary Art in 1969. Slinger published a book of her photographic collages in 1971 and Rolling Stone magazine compared its importance to that of The Beatles. Slinger developed her theories and practice around ideas of surrealism and its relationship to feminism. In tandem with exhibiting at London museums and galleries, she worked closely with the worlds of theater and film, consistently publishing books of her visual work and poetry.  In 1980, she moved to the Caribbean, where she evolved her practice in the direction of archaeology and indigenous cultures. From there she moved to Northern California in 1994, hosting events and residencies for creatives in the region. She became an American citizen and has lived in California since. She has exhibited widely throughout her career, in the UK, Europe, across the USA, Asia and the Caribbean. Discover a selection of work:  Penny Slinger, An Exorcism, 1977 https://pennyslinger.com/Works/an-exorcism-2/ https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/penny-slinger-13524 Penny Slinger, 50% The Visible Woman, 1971 https://pennyslinger.com/Works/50-the-visible-woman/ Penny Slinger, Doll’s  houses, 1970-2019 https://pennyslinger.com/Works/dolls-houses-2/ Penny Slinger, Christian Dior Haute Couture at 30 avenue Montaigne (Paris), July 2019 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVl3jLEKfq8 https://www.dior.com/diormag/fr_fr/article/33195 “ Young and Fantastic”, exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 1969 https://pennyslinger.com/Works/1960s-3d-works/#prettyPhoto[portfolio]/19/ “400 Years of Collage”, an exhibition at the National Galleries of Scotland, 2019 https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/features/penny-slinger-collage-naughty-medium Penny Slinger, Out of the shadows, a film Richard Kovitch, 2017 https://www.pennyslingerfilm.com

Welcome to this seventh episode of Dior Talks. This podcast series will explore the connections between Creative Director of Women’s collections Maria Grazia Chiuri and contemporary women artists and curators.  In this episode, series host Katy Hessel, a London-based curator, writer and art historian, speaks to Vicki Noble, the iconic and trailblazing proponent of shamanic feminism, the Goddess Movement and the second-wave feminism of the 1970s. For the Dior Cruise 2018 collection, Maria Grazia Chiuri was inspired to collaborate with Noble on an exquisite and mystical series of clothing, accessories and jewelry based on the groundbreaking Motherpeace Tarot cards which she created with Karen Vogel in Berkeley, California in the 1970s. The captivating results were subsequently debuted in a selection of dedicated pop-up stores around the world that had been specially decorated with paintings and hangings featuring arcana from the deck such as ‘The Wheel of Fortune’, ‘The High Priestess’ and ‘The Sun’. Vicki Noble was born in Iowa in 1947 but moved to Berkeley, then the epicenter of the hippy and feminist movements, in 1976, where she met her future collaborator Vogel. Together they created the Motherpeace Tarot deck of cards after being inspired by the contemporary Goddess Movement and the vibrant, radical feminism of the era. In this critical period of feminist development, visual art was extremely important and Noble was a crucial figure in the drive to weave links between the new progressive politics, the occult, mysticism and creativity. In this new episode of Dior Talks we speak to Noble about her extraordinary, surprising and avant-garde career, and about the famous deck of cards which has never been out of production since it was created over four decades ago and which has inspired generations of feminists worldwide. Discover a selection of works: Vicki Noble, Karen Vogel, The Motherpeace Tarot, 1978https://books.google.fr/books?id=UWsKAAAACAAJ&dq=vicki+noble&hl=fr&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjOx7zYl-3oAhWQ4IUKHR7wBwsQ6AEIZzAG https://fr-fr.facebook.com/Dior/videos/the-motherpeace-tarot-by-vicki-noble-and-karen-vogel/1606501142737878/ Vicki Noble, Shakti Woman : Feeling our Fire, Healing our World, 1991https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062281470/shakti-woman/ An interview with Vicki Noble, Dior Resort Show, 2017 https://fr-fr.facebook.com/Dior/videos/1356667151054613/ Marija Gimbutas, The Language of the Goddess : Unearthing the Hidden Symbols of Western Civilization, 1989 ttps://books.google.fr/books/about/The_Language_of_the_Goddess.html?id=WTmVQgAACAAJ&redir_esc=y

In this first, highly compelling episode of the podcast series “Mes Chéries: The Women of Christian Dior”, recorded at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Oriole Cullen, curator of Modern Textiles and Fashion, and Justine Picardie, fashion editor and biographer, discuss two of the most important and most influential women in Monsieur Dior’s life: his mother and his sister. An embodiment of Belle Époque society, Madeleine Dior, the founding couturier’s mother, lived a charmed existence. The wife of a wealthy industrialist, she could afford to dress well and, for the first part of his childhood, raised her son in a large, well-staffed villa overlooking the sea at Granville, where the expansive gardens, and his passion for spending time with her there to learn about plants and flowers, would exert an enormous influence on his later career. His sister, Catherine, younger by twelve years, was also passionate about flowers, and would in adulthood become a highly successful commercial grower. They were very close, despite their age gap, and when their mother died prematurely, he became almost a surrogate parent to her. During WWII, this passionate and principled young woman joined the French Resistance and was ultimately captured and imprisoned. Her distraught brother turned to another trusted woman, his clairvoyant, to be reassured that he would be reunited with his beloved Catherine.

In this second episode of the fascinating podcast series “Mes Chéries: The Women of Christian Dior”, recorded at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Oriole Cullen, curator of Modern Textiles and Fashion, and Justine Picardie, fashion editor and biographer, discuss three key women in Monsieur Dior’s life: Raymonde Zehnacker, Marguerite Carré and Mitzah Bricard. As this series reveals, a number of women had an outsized effect on the life of the celebrated couturier and the course of his career. He had initially worked with Raymonde Zehnacker at the house of Lucien Lelong, and when he left to start his own couture house she came with him as studio director, but exerted a much broader influence and importance, professionally and personally. Both Monsieur Dior’s right hand and his protector, he described her as his “second self”. Marguerite Carré, on the other hand, headhunted from the house of Jean Patou and appointed technical director, was the genius who deciphered his sketches and transformed his desires, however challenging, into real and covetable clothes. Mitzah  Bricard, the most fantastical of the three, and regularly still evoked today, [not least in the narrow ‘Mitzah’ scarf named after her,] was also the most enigmatic. This woman “without a past” cultivated an air of mystery, not least communicated by her signature wearing of veiled hats – she was ostensibly head of the millinery atelier, as well as being Monsieur Dior’s muse – and was never without copious jewelry, whatever the occasion, or a leopard-print scarf wrapped around her wrist. The ambiguity of her origins was reflected by the somewhat undefined part she played in the House, a part not rooted in any great appreciation of practicality. As the fashion editor Bettina Ballard once noted of her, she “only understood extravagant elegance” – which proved the perfect way to write herself into fashion history.

In this third episode of the enthralling podcast series “Mes Chéries: The Women of Christian Dior”, recorded at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Oriole Cullen, curator of Modern Textiles and Fashion, and Justine Picardie, fashion editor and biographer, talk about two more of the many important women in Monsieur Dior’s life: Suzanne Luling and Madame Delahaye.   Remaining faithful to several childhood friends from Granville, Monsieur Dior hired Suzanne Luling to take charge of sales and PR. She had long been a source of stability to him, and as his fame and responsibilities exponentially grew he relied heavily on her as a level-headed and highly capable influence. Having turned to her when his beloved sister had been deported during the war, he turned to her again for her ability at being good in a crisis, whether that was managing the frictions that occurred daily in the workplace, or faultlessly orchestrating events and elegantly taking care of press, buyers and clients from across the globe.   As a child in Granville, Monsieur Dior had been told by a fortune teller that women would be very important in his future and it would be to them that he would owe his great success. That sense of superstition that emerged at a young age would become deeply ingrained, and by the time he was due to open his own couture house, consultations with a clairvoyant became an everyday occurrence. The woman in question was Madame Delahaye, a suitably mysterious figure about whom very little is known, not even her first name, but the role she played in his life, and in his creative decisions, cannot be underestimated. In a bitter twist of irony, having listened faithfully to her every prediction up to that point, he disregarded what would turn out to be her final piece of advice to him and headed off to a health spa in Italy, a trip from which he would never return.

In this fourth and final episode of the illuminating podcast series “Mes Chéries: The Women of Christian Dior”, recorded at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Oriole Cullen, curator of Modern Textiles and Fashion, and Justine Picardie, fashion editor and biographer, discuss the outsize role played by the Dior models and clients and by the editors who propelled the founding couturier’s name around the world.  When Monsieur Dior showed his famous first collection in 1947, his couture house, like every other, had its own roster of exclusive models. They worked as fit models through out the year, and during the weeks of showings in the salons, and on promotional trips, they were the embodiment of Dior creativity. Selected for their singular personalities as much as their figures, their range of physiques gave clients an idealized impression of how they themselves might look in the new season’s creations.  Those clients could well include royalty, as was the case, for example, with Princess Margaret who, along with her mother and sister, the future Queen Elizabeth II, was a passionate admirer and an early adopter of this revolutionary Paris style. Despite previously working as a hired hand, Monsieur Dior was already on several international radars before wowing the world with his debut collection under his own name. In fact, Carmel Snow, the famous editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar at the time, and the one who coined the term “the New Look”, was just one of the media mavens who had recognized Monsieur Dior’s talents when he was part of the stable of designers working at Lucien Lelong, and Robert Piguet before that. Possessing a remarkable eye for talent, she commissioned illustrations from him and followed his career until, on the morning of February 12, 1947, she sat on a gilt chair at 30 Avenue Montaigne to watch a parade of clothes that, with one fell swoop, would change the world of fashion overnight and forever. 

Welcome to this first episode of the new Dior Talks series ‘The Female Gaze’. With the term developed in response to the writings of feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey, this podcast series will explore how the work of the female photographers and creatives collaborating with Dior offers a radically new and progressive image of women.  In this episode, series host Charlotte Jansen, a British journalist and author, speaks with Maria Grazia Chiuri about how the Creative Director of Women’s collections has initiated a new dialogue around the perception of women by women in the 21st century. Upon arriving at the House, Maria Grazia Chiuri made the idea of the female gaze an essential part of her work. Aware that the DNA of Dior is defined by femininity, she set out to explore how to make this correspond to her world view and chose to work solely with female photographers, writers and artists, which proved a surprisingly revolutionary concept. As she notes of her own experience, women behave differently when they are the subject of a female photographer. With the fashion world dominated by male image makers, she called on a wide variety of talents, some renowned in other areas – such as the war photographer Christine Spengler – and others much more under the radar, with the condition that they be given creative free rein in their interpretation of her work. Dior is a name recognized all over the world, so it was key to seek out an equally international roster of talents to convey non-stereotypical representations of Dior femininity, celebrating differences and rewriting preconceptions.  Discover a selection of works:  Laura Mulvey, « Visual pleasure and narrative cinema », Screen, n°16, Autumn 1975 Cindy Sherman, Untitled film stills, 1977-1980 https://www.moma.org/collection/works/56618 - Dior Cruise 2020 x Ruth Ginka Ossai  https://i-d.vice.com/en_uk/article/wjwv59/dior-new-cruise-campaign-modern-african-photography-female-gaze https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c40oibKskX8&list=PLzPXOOq1r2gFjNSl4siIBfzMLrSUcRBr0&index=5&t=0s  « Feminine, plural » : the women photographers shooting the Dior Cruise 2020 collection https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABcBejpQ7UQ&list=PLzPXOOq1r2gFjNSl4siIBfzMLrSUcRBr0&index=1 Deborah Tuberville ( 1932-2013) https://www.parismuseescollections.paris.fr/fr/recherche/type/oeuvre/auteur/Turbeville%2C%20Deborah - Dior Autumn-Winter 2018 x Christine Spengler https://www.dior.com/diormag/it_it/article/intervista-christine-spengler Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider : Essais and Speeches, 1984https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/314/314706/sister-outsider/9780241410509.html  - “Girl On Girl”, Charlotte Jansen https://smarturl.it/girlongirl

Welcome to this second episode of the new Dior Talks series ‘The Female Gaze’. With the term developed in response to the writings of feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey, this podcast series which explore how the work of the female photographers and creatives collaborating with Dior offers a radically new and progressive image of women.  In this episode, series host Charlotte Jansen, a British journalist and author, speaks with Maripol, an icon of 1980s culture in New York and an influential artist, filmmaker, designer and stylist. Maripol discusses her extraordinary career and her passions and influences from her childhood in France to the heady days and multidisciplinary inspirations of Manhattan, and her photographic collaborations with Maria Grazia Chiuri, Creative Director of Women’s collections. Having moved to New York City in 1976 at the age of 20 with her then-boyfriend Edo Bertoglio, the Swiss photographer and director with whom she would have a highly fruitful artistic collaboration, Maripol became art director of Fiorucci by the early ‘80s, before opening her own boutique, Maripolitan, in the mid-80s. She was Madonna’s stylist for her first two iconic albums, creating the famous look for Like a Virgin, and also made numerous documentary films. She directed The Message, about the life of Keith Haring, and also produced Downtown 81, starring Jean-Michel Basquiat and Blondie. She is noted for her pioneering use of the Polaroid camera – her first SX-70 was a gift from Bertoglio – particularly for fashion photography and portraiture, and in 2014 published a book of her work, MARIPOLARAMA. Always outspoken and audacious, she divulges her unique take on life, culture and feminism in this episode. She has always collaborated with remarkable individuals and has always been fascinated with fashion. She brought to it her broad education in the arts and her rebellious, punk sensibility, and as soon as she landed in New York, people noticed her for her unique style and self-made accessories. She fully embraced the collaborative spirit of the city at that time and has been creating and working with like-minded pioneers ever since, most recently with her Polaroid shoots of Maria Grazia Chiuri’s collections. Discover a selection of works:  - "The Women Behind the Lens: Maripol, Dior Mag, 20th March 2016 https://www.dior.com/diormag/en_hk/article/the-photos-of-maripol  -  "The Photos of Maripol", Dior Mag, 20th March 2016 https://www.dior.com/diormag/en_hk/article/the-photos-of-maripol  - Backstage Dior Spring-Summer ready-to-wear 2017 by Maripol https://vimeo.com/306933860 Grace Jones by Maripol at Studio 54, 1979https://www.phillips.com/detail/maripol/NY000309/289  -  Hanra, "Maripol: Did I discover Madonna? She discovered me!", The Guardian, 2015https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2015/mar/20/maripol-madonna-photographer-stylist-polaroids-exhibition - Debbie Harry by Maripol, 1980https://www.absolutart.com/us/artist/maripol/artwork/deborah-harry-1980/  - "Keith Haring: The Message" directed by Maripol, 2013https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xzb9ki  - "Downtown 81" directed by Edo Bertoglio produced by Maripol, 2001 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6GoKk-iMOs - Geller "Jewelry designer Maripol on Fiorucci, Grace Jones and Madonna", Interview Magazine, 2018 https://www.interviewmagazine.com/fashion/maripol-lynn-geller-interview - Grace Jones modelling Maripol's rubber bracelets for Fiorucci, 1980s https://www.vfiles.com/vfiles/53612  - Museum of Sex,"Punk Lust: Raw Provocation 1971–1985", New York, November 29, 2018 – November 19, 2019 https://www.museumofsex.com/portfolio_page/punk/ - A whip belt and brace necklace by Maripol in Bettridge "A new exhibition of punk-era lust reminds us how gentrified sex has become", Interview Magazine, 2018 https://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/maripol-and-the-museum-of-sex-exhibit-reminds-us-how-gentrified-sex-is  - "Andy Warhol with Polaroid" by Anton Perish, 1977 in Sirisuk "Un photographe s'est immiscé dans les clubs new-yorkais les plus cools des années 1970", I-D Magazine, 2018 https://i-d.vice.com/fr/article/d35e5y/un-photographe-sest-immisce-dans-les-clubs-new-yorkais-les-plus-cools-des-annees-1970  - Interview Magazine, December 1985  https://www.interviewmagazine.com/tag/new-again-december-1985  - Maripol, "Little Red Riding Hood", 2010 https://maripol.com/books/  - Lisa Lyon by Robert Mapplethorpe, 1982 https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/90662/lisa-lyon - "Robert Mapplethorpe's Sensual Flowers", AnOther Magazine, 2016 https://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/8524/robert-mapplethorpes-sensual-flowers  - “Girl On Girl”, Charlotte Jansen https://smarturl.it/girlongirl

Welcome to this third episode of the new Dior Talks series ‘The Female Gaze’. With the term developed in response to the writings of feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey, this podcast series will explore how the work of the female photographers and creatives collaborating with Dior offers a radically new and progressive image of women.  In this episode, series host Charlotte Jansen, a British journalist and author, speaks with Janette Beckman, the London-born, New York-based documentary photographer who shot the autumn-winter 2019 campaign. Beckman’s remarkable career spans more than four decades, during which time she has photographed the rock and punk legends of the UK and USA, the emerging hip-hop generation in the early ’80s and numerous iconic album covers. Janette Beckman was raised in North London and attended St. Martins School of Art before studying photography at the London College of Communication. She was already working for legendary music magazines Sounds, Melody Maker and The Face in the late ’70s and early ’80s and her first assignment was for the group Siouxsie and the Banshees. On moving to New York in 1982, her gritty aesthetic ruffled feathers in the context of the air-brushed style of most album covers of the time. Her response was to focus on the new and revolutionary hip-hop scene, photographing Public Enemy, The Beastie Boys and LL Cool J amongst many others. In this week’s episode, Beckman discusses her experiences of being a young woman and a foreigner in the New York music and photography scenes at a seminal yet very different time. She ruminates on the notion of the outsider and issues of appropriation, and how her origins in London’s punk culture contributed to the curiosity that spurred her entrée into the rap scene rising in New York’s outer boroughs. She also discusses her own ‘female gaze’ and how she captured, with her direct and irreverent eye, the intimate and typically unseen moments in the creation of the spring-summer 2017 collection, Maria Grazia Chiuri’s debut at the House.   Discover a selection of works:  The Women Behind the Lens x Janette Beckman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AYU2mjfIPA Janette Beckman, Dior Backstage, Spring-Summer 2017 https://www.dior.com/diormag/fr_be/article/les-photos-de-janette-beckman Janette Beckman, Dior Fall-Winter 2019 https://janettebeckman.com/new-work/dior-1/ Janette Beckman, Mods Streatham, 1976 https://janettebeckman.com/uk-youth/#2 Janette Beckman, LL Cool J, 1985 https://janettebeckman.com/hip-hop/#5 Janette Beckman, Salt ‘N Pepa, 1987 https://janettebeckman.com/hip-hop/sp/ Martha Cooper http://www.stevenkasher.com/artists/martha-cooper ‘Girl On Girl’, Charlotte Jansen https://smarturl.it/girlongirl

Welcome to this fourth episode of the new Dior Talks series ‘The Female Gaze’. With the term developed in response to the writings of feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey, this podcast series will explore how the work of the female photographers and creatives collaborating with Dior offers a radically new and progressive image of women. In this episode, series host Charlotte Jansen, a British journalist and author, speaks with Brigitte Lacombe, the French-born New Yorker who has made an esteemed career photographing major figures in Hollywood and the world of theater from a unique point of view. Her ‘behind-the-scenes’ images of iconic figures have brought a specialist and specific angle to the concept of the ‘female gaze’.  Brigitte Lacombe was raised in the Gard region of southern France and began her career working in the black and white photography lab of Elle magazine in Paris. Her first break came when she traveled to the 1975 Festival de Cannes where she met actors Dustin Hoffman and Donald Sutherland. From this point she started to shoot on film sets, documenting the making of the movies of Martin Scorsese, Sam Mendes, David Mamet and others. Over the years she has developed a strikingly intimate, private aesthetic, subverting the traditional posturing associated with fame and moving beyond the classic idea of celluloid celebrity. Here, Lacombe discusses her approach to image-making over more than four decades and how her vision has evolved during her time working in a movie industry which has undergone immense political and social changes. She examines the development of her style, of which Creative Director of Women’s collections Maria Grazia Chiuri is a great admirer, which led to her inviting Lacombe to shoot several campaigns, including two featuring actress and muse Jennifer Lawrence.

Welcome to this fifth episode of the new Dior Talks series ‘The Female Gaze’. With the term developed in response to the writings of feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey, this podcast series will explore how the work of the female photographers and creatives collaborating with Dior offers a radically new and progressive image of women. In this episode, series host Charlotte Jansen, a British journalist and author, chats with Brigitte Niedermair, a fashion photographer who, over twenty five years, has developed and honed a highly individual approach to creating the fashion image, upending stereotypes about the genre, and expanding the parameters through which we understand the portrayal of women, and also how we view the female gaze. Brigitte Niedermair was born in the South Tyrol region of Italy in 1971. After dropping out of a photography course, she eventually ended up in the U.S. She worked as a casting director and photographer’s assistant, before taking up the camera herself. She spent ten years constantly on the road, shooting at the highest levels of the industry, using her self-belief and determination to push boundaries and succeed in a stultifyingly male-dominated world. She moved back to her home region in the 2000s, where she has since been based and has always considered her style and creative force to be deeply influenced by her origins. Her editorial work has been published widely and she has staged monographic exhibitions of her patiently composed images worldwide, including a major solo show at the Palazzo Mocenigo as part of the Venice Biennale in 2019. In 2017, she shot Maria Grazia Chiuri’s first collection for the House for Dior Magazine, returning to shoot the autumn-winter 2019 and spring-summer 2020 campaigns, as well as the new fall 2020 campaign, which she also art directed, starring Jennifer Lawrence. In this week’s episode, Charlotte meets with Niedermair virtually at her mountain home and they talk about her experience of lockdown, her thoughts on her own journey as a woman photographer, both in Italy and the wider world, and the profound and varied ideas behind her starkly elegant work. Originally fascinated by painting, Niedermair was eventually drawn to the sense of reality required by photography and its relative newness as a means of image creation. She reflects on this combination of the concrete, the modern and the immediate, which has long drawn her to the camera.

Welcome to this sixth episode of the new Dior Talks series ‘The Female Gaze’. With the term developed in response to the writings of feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey, this podcast series will explore how the work of the female photographers and creatives collaborating with Dior offers a radically new and progressive image of women. In this episode, series host Charlotte Jansen, a British journalist and author, speaks with Sarah Waiswa about her life and career. Waiswa is a documentary and portrait photographer who has dedicated her practice to the study and portrayal of the people of her home continent, in all their extraordinary variety. She takes a very contemporary approach to examining social issues, avoiding trap of the clichés, and views herself as a visual poet and storyteller. Sarah Waiswa was born in Uganda during the time of the brutal dictatorship of Idi Amin, with her family forced to flee shortly afterwards. She grew up in Nairobi, Kenya, where she lives and works to this day. A self-taught photographer, having originally studied psychology and sociology in the US, it was her fascination with social topics in Kenya and the wider region which led her to take up the camera. She has photographed many subjects in many countries, and in 2016 won the prestigious Rencontres d’Arles Discovery Award for her moving and incisive project on the persecution of albinos in sub-Saharan Africa. Waiswa documents what she calls a ‘new African identity’ and is much focused on how the continent and its inhabitants portray themselves and are portrayed by the rest of the world. In this week’s episode, Jansen and Waiswa discuss the strains of lockdown, motherhood and her unlikely route to photography. They also discuss how the camera was a tool of colonialism almost as deadly as the gun, and how images have been used to both dominate and demean African nations and peoples. Creative Director of Women’s collections Maria Grazia Chiuri was inspired by Waiswa’s journey as a female African photographer and invited her, along with five other women photographers from the continent, to collaborate on shooting the cruise 2020 collection.

Welcome to this seventh episode of the new Dior Talks series ‘The Female Gaze’. With the term developed in response to the writings of feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey, this podcast series will explore how the work of the female photographers and creatives collaborating with Dior offers a radically new and progressive image of women. In this episode, series host Charlotte Jansen, a British journalist and author, speaks with Lean Lui, a young photographer making major strides in the worlds of fashion and art imagery with her development of a dreamlike, metaphorical, emotional aesthetic. Self-taught, she only began taking pictures seriously two years ago when she was nineteen, the same age at which, incredibly, she also published her first book. She first picked up a camera when she was six years old and has been fascinated with image-making ever since. On the eve of her move to London to start an MA at Central Saint Martins, she is in great demand for fashion, editorial and gallery-based work. Now twenty-one years old, Lean Lui was born and lives in Hong Kong. She credits her interest in the photography to her early fascination with its chemical processes and arbitrary, analogue roots. Her love of this vintage aesthetic combined with a childhood obsession with reality TV modeling shows, and she started taking pictures of her friends and cousins while other children were in the playground. As she grew older, she developed a passion for the Surrealists and ‘wabi-sabi’, the Japanese aesthetic of transience and imperfection. Her greatest influences have always been painters and thinkers rather than other photographers. In the last couple of years, she has shot for Vogue Italia, VICE Magazine and Figaro HK, as well as the recent ‘Secret Garden’ shoot for Dior Magazine. In this week’s episode, Charlotte Jansen asks Lean Lui about her influences and ambitions for the future and her own particular approach to feminism and expanding notions of the female gaze. Lui describes herself as a solitary child, more interested in creating her own worlds and forming her own visual language than following the status quo. As she gets ready to embark on her MA at Central Saint Martins in London, she elaborates on her own 21st-century feminism and already considerable body of work, including her landmark series of images ‘Teenage Problems’ in which she captured a group of girls navigating their place in the world.

Welcome to this eighth episode of the new Dior Talks series ‘The Female Gaze’. With the term developed in response to the writings of feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey, this podcast series will explore how the work of the female photographers and creatives collaborating with Dior offers a radically new and progressive image of women. In this episode, series host Charlotte Jansen, a British journalist and author, talks to Pamela Hanson, a major figure in the world of fashion photography. She has always formed a unique bond with her subjects and has turned her lens on the major figures of the fashion world, building a formidable body of work in the editorial, advertising and portraiture spheres. Pamela Hanson was born in London and grew up in Geneva. She originally moved to the USA to study fine arts at the University of Colorado and has lived and worked in New York for three decades. Throughout her career she has broken through entrenched gender barriers, working with and photographing generations of key players in the industry. She has seen first-hand the changes and evolutions which have taken place and has worked across media, creating a formidable catalogue of photographic and moving-image work. She has worked with all international editions of Vogue, Vanity Fair, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle and GQ, among many others, and has photographed and filmed a multitude of campaigns. In 2001, she published Girls, a book featuring over 200 examples of her personal and professional work, following this with Boys in 2006.  In this week’s episode, Charlotte Jansen speaks with Hanson about the position of women in fashion, discussing her how she views the changes which have taken place and whether these changes will prove lasting and meaningful. Hanson set up her first darkroom at the age of 13 and, as such, has been examining her own observations of the world ever since. She discusses her initial interest in art history and her unlikely entrée into the world of fashion. Her long and varied experience provides the backdrop to her trademark personal, intimate relationship with her subjects.

Welcome to the eighth episode of the new Dior Talks podcast series ‘Feminist Art’. This series will highlight some of the key practitioners in the pioneering and evolving field of feminist art, a source of endless inspiration for Maria Grazia Chiuri, Creative Director of Women’s collections.  In this episode, series host Katy Hessel, a London-based curator, writer and art-historian, speaks with Marinella Senatore, the Rome-based multimedia artist, about her challenging and politically uncompromising approach to making her work. For the unveiling of the Cruise 2021 collection, Maria Grazia Chiuri commissioned Senatore to collaborate with local artisans on a series of mammoth light sculptures – luminarie – for the audience-free show, streamed live from Lecce in Puglia, Italy. These works incorporate varied phrases which inspired Maria Grazia Chiuri during the creation of the collection, the spirit of which is summed up by the statement, “We rise by lifting others”. Marinella Senatore was born in Italy in 1977 and studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Napoli, the Conservatorio and the Scuola Nazionale di Cinema in Rome. This expansive education has influenced her impressively wide-ranging artistic practice ever since, as she works with video, action, photography, installation, sculpture and painting. Fascinated by ideas of participation, dialogue, history and social structures, she is highly prolific and has exhibited widely. She has shown at the Centre Pompidou, MAXXI, the Queens Museum, Kunsthaus Zürich and Castello di Rivoli amongst many others, and has participated in numerous group shows, screenings and residences. Her all-encompassing approach to making art was a perfect contribution to Maria Grazia Chiuri’s concept for the staging of the 2021 Cruise show, and the unique set of cultural and social conditions present in the province of Puglia, which was also the collection’s primary inspiration. Senatore is constantly inspired by communities and the actions and creations achievable through a site-specific, in-person approach to examining concepts of physical and virtual space and the challenges posed by the technical limitations of photography and cinematography. With Katy Hessel she discusses the collaboration and the origins of the bond she and Maria Grazia Chiuri formed over their shared passion for Italian feminist art.

Welcome to this ninth episode of the Dior Talks podcast series ‘Feminist Art’. This podcast series will explore the connections between Creative Director of Women’s collections Maria Grazia Chiuri and contemporary women artists and curators.  In this episode, series host Katy Hessel, a London-based curator, writer and art-historian, speaks with Mickalene Thomas, the New York-based painter and multimedia artist, about her career as an observer and documenter of African American womanhood in all its variety, and her lifelong fascination with the black female experience, from her own family members to the world at large. Mickalene Thomas was born in Camden, New Jersey, in 1971 and was raised by a remarkable mother who introduced her to visual art as a young child and raised her as a Buddhist. Thomas studied pre-law and theater in Portland, Oregon, before completing her BA and MA in Fine Art at the Pratt Institute and Yale School of Art, respectively. Based in Brooklyn, she has exhibited her paintings, collages, photographs, films and videos around the world, including in major exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum, ICA Boston, Aspen Art Museum and Baltimore Museum of Art. She has also completed many commissions, amongst others at MoMA PS1 in New York, the Norton Museum of Art, and a mosaic mural for the wall of the U.S. Embassy in Dakar, Senegal. Thomas’s work and research processes involve multiple reference points, including the history of art, the representation of black femininity and black power and the seminal 1970s ‘Blaxploitation’ genre. She has painted many iconic African American women, including Eartha Kitt, Whitney Houston, Oprah Winfrey and Michelle Obama, and is renowned for her deft use of classical traditions of fine art in her penetrative portrayals of the black experience. For the Dior Cruise 2020 collection, Maria Grazia Chiuri commissioned Thomas to reinterpret Christian Dior’s iconic ‘Bar’ jacket, a timely collaboration and an opportunity for the two creatives to combine their passions for the historical and the contemporary, along with their mutual dedication to feminism and female creativity. In 2018, Thomas was invited to create a new and striking take on the ‘Lady Dior’ handbag, as part of the limited-edition ‘Dior Lady Art’ series.

Welcome to this ninth episode of the Dior Talks series ‘The Female Gaze’. With the term developed in response to the writings of feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey, this podcast series will explore how the work of the female photographers and creatives collaborating with Dior offers a radically new and progressive image of women. In this episode, series host Charlotte Jansen, a British journalist and author, speaks with young fashion photographer Paola Vivas, who is making waves in the fashion world with her fresh, natural perspective on femininity and gender. She speaks about her unlikely move to London and the diversity of the city which she finds so inspiring and also reflects on her Mexican roots and their influence on her aesthetic. She also discusses her 2018 collaboration with Dior. Paola Vivas was born and raised in Merida in southern Mexico, an area of great beauty with a very distinctive culture and way of life. She initially came to London for a holiday while she figured out her next move after studying fashion design in Mexico. That holiday became a permanent relocation when she signed up for a course in fashion photography at the University of the Arts, having fallen in love with the creativity and diversity of the city. Since then she has moved quickly, becoming part of a new wave of young female photographers changing the boundaries and language of the depiction of the female body and the portrayal of womanhood and gender in fashion imagery.  In this new episode, Paola Vivas tells Charlotte Jansen about her complex relationship with London and how it has changed and influenced her work over time. They talk about her experiences of lockdown as a creative and image-maker and how it has enriched her understanding of urban space and possibility. In 2018, Paola Vivas was one of a group of Mexican women photographers commissioned by Maria Grazia Chiuri to shoot the Dior Cruise 2019 collection and she chose the extraordinary location of Luis Barragán’s architectural masterpiece, Cuadra San Cristóbal, as the setting of her Dior Magazine story. She elaborates on her collaboration with Dior and the beautiful, moving homage to Mexican female artistry which resulted. generation of young women photographers, and her collaboration with @MariaGraziaChiuri for Dior Magazine.

Welcome to this tenth episode of the new Dior Talks series ‘The Female Gaze’. With the term developed in response to the writings of feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey, this podcast series will explore how the work of the female photographers and creatives collaborating with Dior offers a radically new and progressive image of women. In this episode, series host Charlotte Jansen, a British journalist and author, talks to Nadine Ijewere, who is making major strides in the world of fashion photography at a remarkably young age. Despite a childhood passion for the art, Ijewere decided to forego the usual career ladder of studio apprenticeships and assisting, identifying early on a profound lack of true and representative images of women of color in the fashion industry, something she has consistently worked to rectify. From her first images of her group of ethnically diverse girlfriends to her work for major magazines, galleries and photo festivals, she hones her critical study of concepts of beauty and builds on her ongoing project to turn physical imperfections upside down. Nadine Ijewere was born in 1992 and grew up in South-East London with Jamaican and Nigerian heritage. Photography was a creative outlet for her through her school years and she went on to study it at the London College of Fashion. After graduating she chose the atypical step of working in interior design, whilst continuing to shoot images of her friends in her spare time. Concerned by the crass stereotyping of ethnicities and cultures in fashion imagery, she worked with models of color from the start and posted her early work on social media. Quickly gaining recognition for her refreshing and searching depictions of multiracial subjects, she has since been in great demand for her ability to create beautiful fashion images which, through their reflection of her own diverse heritage and community, have offered a sorely needed break from the clichés and compartmentalization characteristic of the industry. In 2019, at the incredibly young age of 27, she became the first woman of color to shoot the cover of any Vogue magazine, with British Vogue. She has worked with many major publications around the world and has exhibited her work widely, including at Tate Britain in 2016 and the Lagos Photo Festival in 2017. Here, Charlotte Jansen and Nadine Ijewere chat about London life, the diversity of the city and the very specific experience of being a child of mixed heritage in a white majority society, from the attitudes to black women’s hair to the preconceived perceptions which are invariably never far away. They discuss Ijewere’s modest disbelief at being invited to shoot the cover of Vogue, as well as her recent receipt of the International Center of Photography’s 2020 Infinity Award. She describes her surprised excitement at the rapid trajectory of her career and the influential and inspiring figures she is collaborating with. Not least, she reflects on the experience of shooting the Dior 2020 Cruise campaign and working with Creative Director of Women’s collections Maria Grazia Chiuri.

Welcome to this eleventh episode of the new Dior Talks series ‘The Female Gaze’. With the term developed in response to the writings of feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey, this podcast series will explore how the work of the female photographers and creatives collaborating with Dior offers a radically new and progressive image of women. In this episode, series host Charlotte Jansen, a British journalist and author, speaks with one of the legendary figures of photography in the last half century. Bettina Rheims has been prominent and highly prolific in the world of portraiture, and also fashion photography, for four decades, having first picked up a camera in 1978. She started by photographing a group of female striptease artists and became fascinated by capturing the femininity, power and corporeality of womanhood. This is a fascination which she has maintained ever since in a long and varied career. Bettina Rheims was born in the Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1952, into a family deeply involved with the worlds of art, literature and the media. Her passion for photography evolved in the late 1970s, after she had already had careers as a model, journalist and gallerist. She had published almost twenty books of her images from the 1980s to the 2010s. She has photographed Catherine Deneuve, Charlotte Rampling, Madonna, Marianne Faithful and Claudia Schiffer amongst many, many others. She has also undertaken advertising campaigns for numerous fashion labels and worked with countless international magazines. She has always combined her skill in capturing the unique qualities of her famous female subjects with an interest in the bizarre, shocking and subcultural. She has had solo exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou, the Kunsthal Rotterdam and the Musée d’Art Contemporain, Lyon. In 2016, as part of the #TheWomenBehindTheLens project initiated by Maria Grazia Chiuri, Rheims photographed Laetitia Casta for Dior Magazine as the embodiment of a modern, liberated woman. In this week’s episode, Jansen speaks with Rheims about her radical ideas of beauty and femininity, and how these have evolved over the years. Having taken portraits of prisoners, porn  actors, political figures and countless women both cisgender and trans, Rheims has constantly expanded and developed notions of womanhood and womanly strength. When asked why she photographs women, Rheims answers with characteristic honesty, “This is the question I have been asked the most. I haven’t yet found an answer.” This episode represents a treasured opportunity to hear her deepest thoughts on this and other prescient subjects.

Welcome to this 12th episode of the new Dior Talks series ‘The Female Gaze’. With the term developed in response to the writings of feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey, this podcast series will explore how the work of the female photographers and creatives collaborating with Dior offers a radically new and progressive image of women. In this episode, series host Charlotte Jansen, a British journalist and author, speaks with Jodi Bieber, a Johannesburg-based photographer who eschews categorizations of her work and casts a singular, gimlet eye on the worlds she documents. Despite having photographed many distressing subject matters and harrowing events worldwide, she rejects the label of ‘photojournalist’ and has no interest in objectifying or typecasting people or places. From her native South Africa to Afghanistan, from women prisoners to intimate portraits of her husband during lockdown, her work is characterized by a modest wonder at the richness and diversity of human life. Jodi Bieber was born in Johannesburg in 1966. In the early ’90s she trained under David Goldblatt and Ken Oosterbroek, two major figures of photojournalism and portraiture respectively in South Africa. Her first professional commission was to cover the 1994 South African general election, and in 2000 she documented the Uganda ebola outbreak for the New York Times magazine. She has continued to travel the world, working extensively with international NGOs, and has undertaken many commissions at home, such as her exquisitely honest images of the Soweto township. She has published four monographs of her photographs and her works feature in many major collections, including the Johannesburg Art Gallery and the Pinault Collection. In 2010, she won the World Press Photo of the Year award for her haunting portrait of Bibi Aisha, a young Afghan woman brutally disfigured by the Taliban. Here, Charlotte and Jodi talk in depth and across the board, from Bieber’s dedication to the education of her students in Johannesburg and the unique and idiosyncratic project she undertook through lockdown, photographing her husband François in a variety of bizarre and surreal costumes. She considers the juxtaposition of the seriousness of much of her subject matter with the humor and absurdity necessary to cope with the unique circumstances of 2020. She describes the multiple faces of her hometown, the beautiful light and the diversity which makes it such a remarkable city. She also shares her razor-sharp observations about the current conditions and challenges of making images of women in South Africa and indeed worldwide and the extraordinary pictures she took of the Dior Cruise 2020 collection.

Welcome to this 13th episode of the Dior Talks series ‘The Female Gaze’. With the term developed in response to the writings of feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey, this podcast series will explore how the work of the female photographers, directors and creatives collaborating with Dior offers a radically new and progressive image of women. In this new episode, series host Charlotte Jansen, a British journalist and author, talks to Alina Marazzi, the Italian director commissioned by Creative Director of Women’s collections Maria Grazia Chiuri to create a short film to be unveiled before the Dior Spring-Summer 2021 show. Marazzi, who lives and works in Milan, has been an established name in the worlds of film and theatre direction for twenty years and is much respected for the focus on female subjectivity, motherhood and memory in her work. She has always been profoundly influenced by feminist theory, particularly – and coincidentally – by the work of Laura Mulvey. Alina Marazzi was born in Milan in 1964. She lost her mother, the writer Luisa Marazzi Hoepli, in 1972 and this trauma informed Marazzi’s work later in life. She studied film in London in the 1980s, focusing on documentary and experimental film. Her first feature, ‘Un'ora sola ti vorrei’ (‘For One More Hour with You’), about her mother’s life, was released in 2002, and since then she has released numerous further films, both documentary and fictional, as well as directing theater and contemporary opera productions. She has won various international awards for her work and her films have been screened widely, from BBC4 in the UK to the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland. In 2014, she was a visiting lecturer at Warwick University, and she is guest lecturer at the Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan. Here, Charlotte Jansen and Alina Marazzi discuss the phone call she received from Maria Grazia Chiuri, inviting her to create the short film for the Spring-Summer 2021 show, and the access the project gave her to the archives of the iconic feminist artist Lucia Marcucci, who has been a great inspiration both to her and to Maria Grazia Chiuri. The film creates a tableau vivant of Marcucci’s groundbreaking legacy and acts as a moving intellectual basis for the collection, as it were one of the pillars of the collection’s conceptual manifesto. Marazzi discusses the foundational ideas of her films, the thinkers and critics who have helped to crystalize her own message. She contemplates the striking similarities and crossovers between her own and the Creative Director’s working methods and the meeting of minds they experienced, which formed the basis of this beautiful short.

Welcome to this 14th episode of the new Dior Talks series ‘The Female Gaze’. With the term developed in response to the writings of feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey, this podcast series will explore how the work of the female photographers and creatives collaborating with Dior offers a radically new and progressive image of women. In this episode, series host Charlotte Jansen, a British journalist and author, speaks with Maya Goded from her home in Mexico City. Goded is no ordinary arbiter of the photographic form, spending years, sometimes decades, working on individual research projects and painstakingly building visual documents of women and womanhood from every stratum of Mexican society. From her sensitive and inquiring photographs of women’s precarious existence, to her subtly moving portrait of Maria Grazia Chiuri, she offers a thoughtful discussion of her working processes and her socially conscious approach to contemporary life. Maya Goded was born in Mexico City in 1967 and currently resides in the beautiful Coyoacán neighborhood which is also home to Frida Kahlo’s Blue House (La Casa Azul). She assisted other photographers before embarking on her solo career, and her first major project was a three-year endeavor photographing Afro-Mexicans, titled Black Earth. She has consistently focused on themes of female sexuality, gender violence, prostitution and the traditional role of motherhood assigned to women in Mexican society. In 2001, she held a major solo exhibition at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, titled Sex Workers 1995-2000, which was hailed for its penetrating, refreshingly nuanced portrayal of its subjects. An unstinting commitment to listening and sensitive observation is the hallmark of Goded’s work, which has allowed her to reveal so many layers of women’s lives without cliché or condescension. Goded has received numerous prestigious awards for her work, including the Guggenheim Fellowship, the FotoPres La Caixa prize and the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund. Here, Charlotte Jansen speaks to Maya Goded about the breadth of her practice and how she views the world at this extraordinary time. They discuss how lockdown has forced each of us into a reckoning with ourselves and our lives and how this year’s eerie silence has led to millions of personal examinations of the potential for change. They reminisce on Goded’s intimate portrait of Maria Grazia Chiuri and the brief, bonding time they spent together. They also reflect on the striking images Goded took of the Dior Cruise 2019 collection. Through her multifaceted and lovingly empathetic practice, Goded is an ideal figure to consider the question, what does it take to change the way we see a woman?

Welcome to the 15th episode of the Dior Talks series ‘The Female Gaze’. With the term developed in response to the writings of feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey, this podcast series will explore how the work of the female photographers and creatives collaborating with Dior offers a radically new and progressive image of women. In this episode, series host Charlotte Jansen, a British journalist and author, talks to Julia Hetta, the acclaimed Swedish fashion photographer who has carved out a distinct position in the industry for her highly choreographed, minutely constructed images for editorial, advertising and portraiture. She takes much inspiration from Old Master paintings, particularly the Dutch still life tradition, and brings a beguiling process of finely balanced composition to a world so often preoccupied with fast appeal. Julia Hetta was born in Uppsala in 1972 and studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam in the early 2000s. As a child she was fascinated by photography and the darkroom which her father had constructed in the basement. She painted and drew, but realised that photography enabled her to realise her ideas of light and shadow with more immediacy and she embraced the development of black and white images. Later she worked for a photographer’s agency but was not concerned with assisting photographers directly, preferring to define her craft through the inspirations of photojournalism. Since starting to work in the fashion world, she has shot for Vogue Italia, British Vogue, AnOther Magazine, W Magazine, L’Uomo Vogue and Dazed & Confused, among many others, and has done campaigns for major labels. She has photographed myriad celebrities, most particularly prominent women, and was also commissioned to take birthday portraits of Queen Silvia of Sweden in 2013. In 2014, her work was included in the exhibition Stop Now: Fashion Photography Next, at Foam Museum in Amsterdam. Here, Charlotte Jansen and Julia Hetta discuss her route to fashion photography and the inspirations she has drawn on in her dedicated study of chiaroscuro and the interplay of darkness and luminosity. She describes working around her innate shyness to form her craft, from her early pictures of her brother to her current work for industry majors. Their conversation veers from the simplicity of Swedish visuals to the writings of Toni Morrison, as they deconstruct Hetta’s complex yet crystalline approach to the representation of women in photography. Finally, Hetta describes her experience shooting the Spring-Summer 2018 haute couture collection for Dior Magazine, and the brave decision of Maria Grazia Chiuri, the Creative Director of Women’s collections, to only collaborate with women.

Welcome to this 16th episode of the new Dior Talks series ‘The Female Gaze’. With the term developed in response to the writings of feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey, this podcast series will explore how the work of the female photographers and creatives collaborating with Dior offers a radically new and progressive image of women. In this episode, series host Charlotte Jansen, a British journalist and author, speaks with the Dutch artist and photographer Viviane Sassen, whose highly prolific, category-defying career blurs the boundaries between fine art and fashion photography, and whose unique aesthetic led to a collaboration with Maria Grazia Chiuri to photograph the campaign for the cruise 2019 collection with Jennifer Lawrence. Her uniquely dream-like aesthetic originates partly from her early childhood experiences in Africa and also with her determinedly expansive approach to photography and insistence on viewing the image through varied metaphorical lenses. Viviane Sassen was born in Amsterdam but spent some of her formative childhood years in Kenya, before her family moved back to the Netherlands in 1978. She studied design and photography and gained a Master’s in Fine Art from the prestigious Ateliers Arnhem. She has returned repeatedly to Kenya and other parts of Africa throughout her career and credits her early experiences in the region for her fascination with ideas of place, identity and anonymity and her use of ideas of memory, abstraction and surreality in her work. She has shown widely around the world, including exhibitions at MoMA, Les Rencontres d’Arles, Nederlands Fotomuseum and the Photographer’s Gallery in London. She was awarded the Dutch Prix de Rome in 2007 and many other awards internationally in recognition of her work. In this week’s episode, Sassen discusses her life and the concept of time in the studio during lockdown and her relationship to the travel and movement which is inherent in her practice. She also speaks about her own viewpoint and her various subjects; how aspects of this gaze are constant and deeply personal, but also how her eye shifts and adapts according to the project she is working on, whether fine art photographs or her prolific output as a fashion photographer.

Welcome to the 17th episode of the Dior Talks series ‘The Female Gaze’. With the term developed in response to the writings of feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey, this podcast series will explore how the work of the female photographers, directors and creatives collaborating with Dior offers a radically new and progressive image of women. In this new episode, series host Charlotte Jansen, a British journalist and author, talks to Raffaella Perna, the highly-esteemed Italian art historian and theorist of feminist visual cultures. A prolific writer, Perna has been based in Rome for much of her career, maintaining her theoretical practice and teaching widely, including at the prestigious Sapienza University. She is also a curator, and last year co-curated with Marco Scotini the exhibition The Unexpected Subject: 1978 Art and Feminism in Italy at the FM Centro per l'Arte Contemporanea in Milan, sponsored by Dior. Perna has a long and distinguished biography as a specialist in Italian feminist art, and the country’s feminist movements in general, most particular during the vital and energized years of the 1970s. She has a particular focus on self-portraiture and its ramifications for female creative agency. She first met Maria Grazia Chiuri in 2008, through feminist icon and artist Tomaso Binga, to whom Charlotte has also spoken as part of this series. The two immediately identified with each other through their mutual passions and concerns, and Perna was instantly struck at how unusual it was for Chiuri as a fashion designer to be so influenced, and so creatively driven, by the politics and conceptual concerns of the movement. She also recognized how influential fashion is, and how interesting it is to consider the potential for its impact as a vehicle for conversation and action.  Here, Charlotte Jansen chats with Raffaella Perna about her dedication to the individuals and trailblazers who have formed the very specific and challenging feminist movements in Italy. The ’70s marked an extraordinary time for women in the country, as a previously conservative and religious society in which women had always occupied a constricted role was exploding and expanding. Women were writing, teaching, making art and campaigning as never before, and Perna is in the unique position to both remember and contextualize it all. She describes the rich landscape of relationships and collaborations which constituted the world of Italian feminism at that time, and her role as a primary theorist and recorder enables her to offer meaningful, prescient comment on the contemporary situation in 2020. Raffaella Perna is one of the only The Female Gaze guests who has not been either a photographer, director or artist herself, and Charlotte Jansen takes the opportunity to delve deeply into the founding principles and dreams of feminism, which has inspired and continues to inspire the work of the Creative Director of Dior women’s collections so profoundly.

Welcome to ‘Feminism’, the new series of ‘Dior Talks’ podcasts, hosted by Justine Picardie. ‘Dior Talks’ creates fascinating spaces for expression, exploring the imaginations and discourses of the artists and thinkers who influence Maria Grazia Chiuri. ‘Feminism’ engages in dialogue with the women who have inspired the Creative Director of Women’s collections and taken part in bold, empowering collaborations with the House. An exceptional roster of guests shares the magic of their thinking and the key moments of their careers with biographer and journalist Justine Picardie. Here, Picardie talks to Sharon Eyal, the highly esteemed dancer and choreographer, who directs the L-E-V Company, the unconventional yet rigorous dance troupe she founded with performance curator Gai Behar.  Trained in classical ballet, she swiftly developed her own uncompromised style early in her career. She has become known for an expansive range of reference, strongly defined aesthetics and complex choreography, has won numerous major awards for her work and performed with her company worldwide. Sharon Eyal was born in Jerusalem, a self-described ‘hyperactive child’ until her parents signed her up for ballet lessons at the age of 4. From 1990 to 2008 she danced with the Batsheva Dance Company, founded by Martha Graham in 1964, and served as associate artistic director for the Batsheva Dancers Create program from 2005-12. Since its founding in 2013, L-E-V has been the arena for her profound, beguiling vision of choreography, with electronic music, fashion, contemporary art and club culture regular references. The company has performed at major venues such as the Joyce Theater, New York, and Sadler’s Wells, London, and international festivals including Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Montpellier Danse and Julidans. In this first episode of ‘Feminism’, Justine Picardie, a longtime fan, asks Eyal about her unrelenting passion for dance and movement as they discuss the central themes of freedom, physicality and flight, both corporeal and emotional. Despite its grueling realities, dance has been a release for Eyal and, intriguingly, a centering source of calm. She talks about the connection she formed with Maria Grazia Chiuri collaborating on the Spring-Summer 2019 show at which Eyal’s dancers gave a remarkable performance, an experience repeated in ‘Disturbing Beauty’, the film that presented the Autumn-Winter 2021-2022 collection. Eyal finds huge inspiration in Maria Grazia Chiuri’s designs and recognizes the importance of female movement, female expression and, most crucially, female liberation in the women’s collections.

Welcome to ‘Feminism’, the new series of ‘Dior Talks’ podcasts, hosted by Justine Picardie. ‘Dior Talks’ creates fascinating spaces for expression, exploring the imaginations and discourses of the artists and thinkers who influence Maria Grazia Chiuri. ‘Feminism’ engages in dialogue with the women who have inspired the Creative Director of Women’s collections and taken part in bold, empowering collaborations with the House. An exceptional roster of guests shares the magic of their thinking and the key moments of their careers with biographer and journalist Justine Picardie. In this second episode, Picardie talks to Robin Morgan, a hugely influential feminist theorist and much-published writer and journalist. Morgan has been a key figure in the women’s movement, both in the USA and internationally, since the early 1960s, and was also an early participant in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements of the time. She is widely considered a crucial figure in the development of modern feminism and has been forming international networks of like-minded campaigners throughout her adult life. Robin Morgan was born in Florida in 1941, to a single woman who had come south to avoid the censure surrounding unmarried motherhood. She spent her early years as a child model and actor, appearing regularly in TV shows. However, her desire to write led her away from her mother’s ambitions for her acting career and towards a degree at Columbia University. She worked as a secretary for a literary agent after college and married poet Kenneth Pitchford in 1962, with whom she had a son, the musician Blake Morgan. At this time, Morgan became active in various leftwing movements, writing for radical publications such as ‘Liberation’ and ‘The National Guardian’. She joined the Civil Rights Movement and in 1967 co-founded the New York Radical Women group. In 1970, she published her first anthology of theoretical texts, ‘Sisterhood is Powerful’. Concurrently publishing volumes of poetry and works of fiction, she received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1979 and has, to date, published 21 books of feminist theory, poetry and fiction and, including several years as editor-in-chief of Ms., has written for multiple newspapers and magazines in the USA and internationally. In 1984, she founded the Sisterhood is Global Institute with Simone de Beauvoir, and in 2005 co-founded the Women’s Media Center. In this second episode of ‘Feminism’, Justine Picardie and Robin Morgan get right to the heart of the major concerns and challenges which have faced and continue to face feminist struggles internationally. Morgan reflects on the surprises and insights of having lived eight decades and recalls the injustices which women faced in their daily lives when she was young. They discuss the transition to post-feminism and the different approaches to women’s causes around the world. Morgan considers the ever-evolving relationship between feminism and the cultural left, and also the perennial hostility from the right. They also talk about Morgan and Maria Grazia Chiuri’s mutual admiration and budding friendship, and the unlikely but magical interaction of fashion and radical feminism which occurred when Chiuri chose to honor Morgan’s remarkable career at a special ceremony in February 2019 in Paris. Morgan has been a long-standing inspiration for the Creative Director of Women’s collections.

Welcome to ‘Feminism’, the new series of ‘Dior Talks’ podcasts, hosted by Justine Picardie. ‘Dior Talks’ creates fascinating spaces for expression, exploring the imaginations and discourses of the artists and thinkers who influence Maria Grazia Chiuri. ‘Feminism’ engages in dialogue with the women who have inspired the Creative Director of Women’s collections and taken part in bold, empowering collaborations with the House. An exceptional roster of guests shares the magic of their thinking and the key moments of their careers with biographer and journalist Justine Picardie. In this third episode, Picardie talks to Eleonora Abbagnato, one of the most important female ballet dancers of her generation. The native Sicilian has risen to the top of the fiercely competitive world of classical dance in both Paris and Rome. She has formed a close and fruitful friendship with Maria Grazia Chiuri, whom she asked, in 2019, to design costumes for ‘Nuit Blanche’, a new production paying tribute to composer Philip Glass, created by young French choreographer Sébastien Bertaud, in which she starred. Chiuri’s enduring love of dance and movement chimed with Abbagnato’s passions to form the first in a series of profound collaborations. Eleonora Abbagnato was born in Palermo, Sicily, in 1978. No one in her family had ever danced before, but at the age of four she started to dance on her own in front of the mirror at home. She left her childhood home at age ten to study dance in Monte Carlo, and at 13 was touring Europe with legendary choreographer Roland Petit and his production of ‘The Sleeping Beauty’. She studied at the elite École de Danse de l’Opéra de Paris and joined the legendary Paris Opera Ballet in 1996. She has since had a meteoric ascent and, in 2021, is looking forward to her farewell performances as an étoile, or principal, this summer. She has also been highly prolific in her native Italy, where she co-hosted the Sanremo Festival in 2007 and, since 2015, has been the Director of the Corps de Ballet at the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma. Here, Justine Picardie and Abbagnato hit the discursive ground running, comparing impassioned notes on the history of classical dance, the changing role of female dancers and the challenges, both mental and physical, that ballet presents. Abbagnato opens up about the huge strain female dancers in particular are put under by (mostly male) choreographers but goes on to reflect on the important and vitalizing contribution women directors and choreographers are now making to the field. She considers the importance of motherhood, both the inspirations of her own mother and also her hopes and ambitions for her young daughters today. They unwrap the special connection she has formed with Maria Grazia Chiuri, and the understanding of the essence of form and movement that has enabled her and her fellow dancers to express such beauty and empowerment while performing in the designs of the house of Dior.

Welcome to this 10th episode of the Dior Talks podcast ‘Feminist Art’. This series explores the connections between Creative Director of Women’s collections Maria Grazia Chiuri, and contemporary women artists and curators. In this episode, series host Katy Hessel, a London-based curator, writer and art-historian, speaks with musical artist Ioanna Gika, the Greek-American musical artist who performed at the Cruise 2022 show held in Athens, on the evening of June 17, 2021. Ioanna Gika was born in Washington D.C. She spent her childhood between Greece and the United States, returning to live at her mother’s Greek home after her father’s death, when she started to write her first album, “Thalassa” (“Sea”) about her life and homeland. She is based in Los Angeles where, in 2009, she founded the band Io Echo with Leopold Ross. They released their debut album in 2013 and have supported Nine Inch Nails, Garbage and Florence + the Machine amongst others. They have performed at the Coachella and Lollapalooza festivals, and Gika has written and performed for movies and television consistently since 2012. Having already performed at the Cruise 2018 show in Los Angeles, Maria Grazia Chiuri was delighted to invite her to collaborate with the House again. On the night, with a live orchestra and multimedia accompaniments, she recited a poem that reflected her roots in Greece and her rich, powerful voice resonated through the Panathenaic Stadium, the first stone of which was laid over 2500 years ago. She talks about this electrifying experience and the feeling of connection to the past which she felt as she performed. Having toured and sung widely around the world, she notes how unique and different this occasion was and how profoundly she seemed to be grounded in the moment. The monumental location itself possesses a huge significance. Constructed in white marble, it was a primary setting for the first modern Olympic Games. Its length symbolizes an ancient unit of measurement and, crucially for both the singer and Maria Grazia Chiuri, it was the first place in Classical Greece where women could freely appear and socialize in public. Ioanna Gika reflects on notions of the word ‘race’ – the human race, the race against time, to participate in a race. The conjunction of these meanings in the stadium created a poignant combination of symbols and thoughts for her. She goes on to consider the personal and social significance of clothes, both in general and also the creations in the collection and the remarkable outfit specially designed for her. Like Maria Grazia Chiuri, she is inspired by the colors of Greece, by the use of blue and all the historical and mystical connotations which accompany it. She also weaves a beautiful connection between the visual sensations of fashion and womanhood and the sensory streams of consciousness so prevalent in her own music.

Welcome to this 11th episode of the Dior Talks podcast ‘Feminist Art’.  This series explores the connections between Creative Director of Women’s collections Maria Grazia Chiuri, and contemporary women artists and curators.   In this episode, series host Katy Hessel, a London-based curator, writer and art historian, speaks with Eva Jospin, the French artist whose monumental embroidered work lined the walls of the show space at the Musée Rodin for the Autumn-Winter 2021-2022 haute couture collection unveiled on July 5, 2021.  Eva Jospin was born in Paris, France, in 1975. She gave up her initial interest in architecture to study sculpture at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, preferring the physicality of the process. Graduating in 2002, she has become known for her sculptural work using cardboard as a material, building up and combining its flat planes to create striking and very often large-scale pieces of complex depth depicting forests, caves, and country homes. With her art having been exhibited in prestigious locations such as the Palais de Tokyo, Manufacture des Gobelins, Musée du Louvre and the Hayward Gallery, she has also been an artist in residence at the Villa Medici in Rome.   It was while in Rome that she discovered the Sala dei Ricami at the Palazzo Colonna, a sumptuous room entirely upholstered in Indian-inspired embroideries. It would prove the inspiration for her collaboration with Maria Grazia Chiuri, a “project that went from big to huge”. Her initial drawings would be developed into a work 40 meters long and 350m2, embroidered by hand by the Chanakya ateliers and the Chanakya School of Craft in Mumbai, India, a phenomenal undertaking requiring in the region of 300 artisans deploying some 400 colors of silk thread in 150 variations of traditional techniques.      In this episode she discusses how she looked to the palette of post-Impressionist painter Edouard Vuillard and the way he built color and perception of depth by utilizing the canvas itself as an intrinsic element. She speaks about how the name of her awe-inspiring installation ‘Chambre de Soie’ (‘Silk Room’), is also a reference to Virginia Woolf’s seminal feminist treatise ‘A Room of One’s Own’, known as ‘Une Chambre à Soi’ in French. With the use of textiles a complete departure, she opens up about embracing this new form of artistic expression and the process behind appreciating the scale and conceiving a visual flow for her expansive installation.  

Welcome to ‘Feminism’, the latest series of ‘Dior Talks’ podcasts, hosted by Justine Picardie. ‘Dior Talks’ creates fascinating spaces for expression, exploring the imaginations and discourses of the artists and thinkers who influence Maria Grazia Chiuri. ‘Feminism’ engages in dialogue with the women who have inspired the Creative Director of Women’s collections and taken part in bold, empowering collaborations with the House. An exceptional roster of guests shares the magic of their thinking and the key moments of their careers with biographer and journalist Justine Picardie. This episode finds actress Felicity Jones talks about the huge changes which have taken place in the worlds of theater, film and television in the last few years, with the advent of the #MeToo movement and the increasing challenge to patriarchal structures. Through her more than twenty-five-year career, Jones has seen a revolution in gender politics across the board and has been witness to the exposure of the misogyny which she herself has experienced in the industry. She and Picardie also discuss women in the history of literature, both in drama and prose, and how long it has taken film and television to catch up with the central role which female characters have always had in the culture and canon. Felicity Jones was born in Birmingham in 1983, to an advertising executive mother and journalist father. She started acting at age 11, in an after-school workshop run by Central Television. At 14 she was starring in the TV series The Worst Witch and had a long-running role in the BBC Radio 4 soap opera The Archers. She has starred in many major television productions in the UK, as well as in the USA, and has appeared in numerous stage plays, including at the Donmar Warehouse and Royal Court Theatre. In 2011, she won a Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Festival and has also been nominated for Best Actress at the Academy Awards, the BAFTAs and the Golden Globes. In 2018, she starred in On the Basis of Sex, a biography of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Here, Picardie and Jones get to the heart of the female experience of the world of acting. Picardie is a longtime admirer of the actress’s work, and their conversation travels from industry dynamics, the frustrations of working on an all-male set, the snail’s pace of the industry’s promotion of women’s leading roles and the changes and challenges which Jones has seen and overcome. They delve into the problematic notion of male genius and its erasure of historic female collaboration, and they discuss the remarkable life and career of Bader Ginsburg. The actress is a fan of Maria Grazia Chiuri and has worn her creations for Dior many times, and at many key events in her career. As she herself puts it, Chiuri designs clothes which a woman “can wear down the pub”, an apt expression of the feminism and freedom which fashion can nurture.

Welcome to ‘Feminism’, the new series of ‘Dior Talks’ podcasts, hosted by Justine Picardie. ‘Dior Talks’ creates fascinating spaces for expression, exploring the imaginations and discourses of the artists and thinkers who influence Maria Grazia Chiuri. ‘Feminism’ engages in dialogue with the women who have inspired the Creative Director of Women’s collections and taken part in bold, empowering collaborations with the House. An exceptional roster of guests shares the magic of their thinking and the key moments of their careers with biographer and journalist Justine Picardie.     In this very special, two-part episode, Justine Picardie goes back to the origins of it all with Maria Grazia Chiuri herself, who was the guest on the very first ‘Dior Talks podcast’ on the subject of feminist art in March last year. On this occasion she is joined by her dynamic daughter and muse Rachele Regini, to delve deep into the issues and passions which drive them both in the work they do and the intellectual and creative journeys on which they embark.     Maria Grazia Chiuri needs little introduction. She has been at the helm of Dior since 2016, creating the ready-to-wear and haute couture collections for the House and pursuing a radical, multi-generational and multinational manifesto for contemporary womenswear. This year she published ‘Her Dior: Maria Grazia Chiuri's New Voice’, featuring the work of over thirty of the photographers with whom she has collaborated for the House. Rachele Regini is her daughter with husband Paolo Regini and was raised in Rome. She studied Art History and then Gender Studies at the prestigious Goldsmiths College of Art in London and now lives and works in Paris, where she is a cultural advisor in the Dior creative department.   In this episode, the trio discuss the meaning of sisterhood, the female spirit through the generations and the challenges of female creativity past and present. Maria Grazia Chiuri reminisces about her journey to a career in fashion and the changes which have taken place in the roles which women can now play in the industry. Like the Creative Director’s own mother, women were historically expected to be dressmakers, while men became couturiers. Paradoxically, they talk about the huge changes in fashion wrought by Monsieur Dior and how his New Look revolutionized the way women dressed.     Regini elaborates on how her studies and research, into politics, gender, art and activism, have influenced her own style and the dialogue around stylistic and political principles which she shares with her mother. Crucially, the two also discuss manhood, and how the modern notion of masculinity can be reinterpreted, how fashion can play a vital role in removing stereotypes and redefining sexual politics. Both mother and daughter are avid readers and passionate advocates for women’s genius and liberation, and the ways in which fashion can express and promote both.  

This latest episode in the ‘Dior Talks’ podcast series broaches the topic of heritage. In it biographer and journalist Justine Picardie speaks with Maria Grazia Chiuri, Creative Director of Dior women’s collections, about the parallels between Monsieur Dior’s burst of creativity brought on by his emergence from the trauma and privations of war and the moment in history through which the world is currently living. The importance of the founding couturier’s relationship with his younger sister Catherine - coincidentally the subject of Picardie’s new book ‘Miss Dior: A Story of Courage and Couture’ - is explored as more than simply a familial relationship. Instead, the pair discuss how so many aspects of Monsieur Dior’s creativity and the long-established House codes that resulted can trace their source to this sibling bond. The fortune-telling and tarot cards that would shape so many of Monsieur Dior’s decisions - and inspire the House’s various creative directors, right up to Maria Grazia Chiuri today - grew from an initial fascination with the divinatory arts to a key source of comfort and hope when Catherine was imprisoned during WWII and all contact with her vanished. After she was freed and found, these emotions would be translated into the New Look, a sartorial reflection of optimism that produced extraordinarily architectural clothes that balanced an idea of protection with one that celebrated feminine and floral beauty. A keen gardener, Catherine would go on to cultivate flowers in the south of France, near her brother’s summer estate, that would provide ingredients for several of the House’s famous fragrances. This fascinating exchange, delving into the overlapping and layering of occurrences and inspirations, pulls back the curtain to plumb the hidden and unnoticed depths of the Dior heritage story.