142 ELLE.COM/UK November 2O19
t’s record-breakingly hot outside. 42.6°C hot. ‘Deadly
heatwave,’ hot (to quote newspaper headlines from the day).
People in Paris are cranky. And sweaty. Everyone, that is,
except Maria Grazia Chiuri. Instead, she sits preternaturally
cool in a dimly lit library in the Christian Dior archives just
off Rue de Marignan in a tiny corner of Paris. The air con is turned to
just the right level, while a Cire Trudon candle burns beside her.
Chiuri is a woman having the last laugh. As we sit down to discuss
her most recent collections for Dior, where she has been creative director
for the past three years – a sublime AW19 Couture show exploring
the relevance of womenswear and a conversation-sparking Cruise
2O2O collection dedicated to
multiculturalism – she’s basking
in the afterglow of parent
company LVMH’s latest sales
results. Reported the day before
we meet, in her final week of
work before signing off for her
summer holiday, the revenue
growth for Chiuri’s work has
been ‘exceptional’. But it hasn’t
always been this way. ‘When
I arrived at Dior, they said, “Oh,
Dior is a feminine brand.” I said,
“OK, but I need to speak about
femininity today.” Femininity is
very multifaceted,’ she explains,
in her voluble Roman accent.
And so Chiuri made her
debut with a T-shirt – a political
one, no less – declaring, ‘We
Should All Be Feminists’. The
statement, which was in fact
taken from author Chimamanda
Ngozi Adichie’s essay of the
same name, didn’t go down so
well. A chorus of critics in the
classical Greek drama that can
be fashion protested. Insiders
tutted. For one, there was the
issue of the T-shirt. Because, Couture! And then there was the issue of
activism. Commercial fashion and feminism are different worlds, never
the twain shall meet. What gives her the right?
Chiuri, smiling and likeable with that rare mix of authority and humility,
says she was surprised, but unshaken. She tells me she didn’t arrive at
Dior with a premeditated plan, but was responding to the cultural moment
and the feeling that was in the air. Because, for Chiuri, fashion is never just
about the clothes. ‘Immediately people said to me, “You are a political
designer.” I said, “I think that everybody is political. Political means
what you think, what you buy, what you want for yourself. Everybody
has a point of view that is political. Why should a designer not?”’
While many argue that it’s impossible for a commercial brand to
engage with activism without exploiting it for profit, others maintain
that it is unrealistic to expect an artist to create in a bubble. The New
York-based painter Mickalene Thomas, one of the contemporary art
world’s reigning superstars, calls Chiuri ‘a feminist and a revolutionary’.
Famous for confronting identity and gender in her own work, Thomas
collaborated with Chiuri on Dior’s Cruise 2O2O collection. ‘Artists have
always been the advocates for shifting, provoking and commentingon the sociopolitical. Artists are
the best disruptors of change,’
says Thomas. She describes the
design process as instinctive.
‘I really think that we have
to try what we feel inside our
heart. And to be a designer is to
speak about how people live.
So I think we have to reflect
all these arguments,’ Chiuri
explains, with a wave of the
hand, each finger adorned with
large, Gothic-style rings.
At age 55, Chiuri exudes
the confidence and curiosity
of a woman who has lived an
accomplished life. The fashion
industry is filled with stories of young upstarts who become design
sensations mere years after graduating from fashion school. But Chiuri is
a woman who worked her way up over decades. Before joining Dior, she
spent 17 years at Valentino, climbing the ranks from accessories designer to
co-creative director, a role she held for eight years with her longtime friend
Pierpaolo Piccioli. The two met in the 198Os, when Chiuri was a graduate
from Istituto Europeo di Design (IED) in Rome, where she was born
and raised. She eventually enlisted him to work alongside her in the
accessories design studio at Fendi before later convincing him to join
her at Valentino, where together they re-energised the brand with a
string of bestselling, waitlist-worthy bags and shoes.he speaks openly, with a rare mixture of authority and
humility, about how her travelling, books, creative
collaborators and two children, Rachele and Nicolo Regini,
have opened her up to new ways of thinking. The idea of
personal growth and evolution comes up often in our
conversation and can be traced throughout Chiuri’s work. ‘I am
a different woman, but the time is also different,’ she says.S
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