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Christian Dior Couture: Swinging Symbolism

Christian Dior’s latest haute couture collection presented Monday in Paris was inspired by Jean Singer Sargent’s portrait of Madame X, a painting so controversial that the American artist was forced to withdraw it when he first showed it at the Paris Salon of 1884.

No chance of that happening with John Galliano’s spring 2008 collection for Dior, one so crammed with ideas about volume and decoration that hundreds of lesser talents will copy it, rather than demand it be withdrawn. And if Dior’s latest haute couture collection told us anything about the future it’s that women worldwide will be wearing volume in explosive colors this coming summer.

Madame X - Sargent had to change the name from its original Madame Gautreau - featured a woman in a black cocktail dress; this collection was a riot of gilded yellows, electric turquoises and burnished reds.

Staged in a tent in the Bois de Boulogne designed like an Eastern Harem with giant black tassels, tulle curtains and rectangular pond, the collection’s voluptuous shapes imitated organic flower shapes, twisting petals and curvaceous leaves. It opened with a series of great yellow embroidered dresses with ballooning shapes but taut torsos that were deliriously over-the-top.

The hats by Stephen Jones were a curiously mixed choice of metallic saucepans of Geisha meets New Look semi circles. The archly cut out heel shoes, though clearly a tricky wear, all looked sensational.

Sargent was not the only artist to be referenced; Gustave Klimt got a look in with several gilded dresses, as did Edward Munch’s blues and Odilon Reddon’s dream like doodles in elaborate embroidery.

Galliano, who took his bow as a courtier from Henry VIII’s England, revealed that he was fascinated by the way Sargent’s painting “scandalized Paris with its shocking combination of chic and eroticism.” His collection certainly had both.

The couturier kept his best cards for last, with grand gowns in a leopard patterns made by embroidery or a swirling cocktail with an enormous ruffled back featuring sea creatures in gold.

Though frequently striking and certainly fresh this was not quite an outstanding Dior collection. Something of Galliano’s unique sense of beauty and femininity was missing. So, while the applause was surely warm at the end, it never thundered, unlike the soundtrack that was almost all Led Zeppelin.

Admirable, audacious but, in a word, not quite exceptional, which is what we’ve come to expect from Galliano’s Dior.

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