Vogue Editors on Maria Grazia Chiuri’s Tenure At Dior

0:03This is The Run Through. I'm Nicole Phelps. Today, I'm in the New York studio with my co-worker and friend of the pod, Mark Holgate, Vogue's fashion news director. Hello. Hello. And from our London studio, we're joined by our fabulous colleague and one of fashion's very best critics, Sarah Mower. Hi, Sarah. Hi. The best critic. Welcome to you both. We are here today to talk about Maria Grazia Curie, who spent nine fantastic years at Dior. Sarah, I went back to one of the first pieces you wrote about her not long after her appointment, and you said, I, for one, am pleased. They've managed to hire a very cool woman.

0:41And in the intervening years, you have spent a lot of time with her. And I want to know what your impressions of her are as a designer and as a person. Well, of course, I'm always totally pro a woman getting a job as a creative director. And I thought it was a really great appointment because Maria Grazia came to it after many years at Valentino. And as a, I think she was 52. I think she was a mature designer and had a really long track record at Valentino and before that Fendi. And I thought that her character was that she just was just so keen and dedicated to learn and to explore and to expand what Dior is.

1:27And I think she really held strong to that. she, to me I think, I kept on writing over my reviews which I also looked at myself, about how she kind of de-ladyified Dior to a certain extent made it, you could see that it was at the very beginning becoming much more focused on what a young woman would wear that you would see she started off with this fencing look, do you remember that Ruth Bell wore which was her opening look and everything was on flats and I mean very much kind of younger attitude. And what she said to me was, at that point, the message is really that there's not one kind of woman, which I thought was really interesting.

2:12That's a really feminist kind of point of view, that she wasn't designing just for within a stereotype. And I think she, yeah, I think she relaxed Dior to a certain extent. It wasn't a lady lady. It was such a strong opening salvo when you think about that fencing look. Mark, do you remember your first impressions of that show? Yeah, I do. I was sitting there and thinking, goodness, it's a kind of radical departure. I mean, what I liked, I mean, to your point, Sarah, was that she took that most iconic piece of Dior clothing, the bar jacket, and she took all the stuffing and the tightness and the kind of constraint out of it.

2:51So you still had that beautiful kind of hourglass shape, but then it was with a crossbody bag and a combat boot. And even when she was going into the more, I guess, frippery things like the tall kind of full skirts or the tarot sweaters or whatever, it was always grounded in this kind of reality. And a kind of, to me, almost an idealizing of the kind of ageless reality of Dior. You know, that it worked whether you were her daughter Raquelie's age or you could be three, four, five, six decades older and still look kind of cool in it and kind of relevant. And that was what really, I think, kind of struck me was that it was just this absolute kind of concretized idea of a very different woman at the house.

3:38It wasn't madame. It wasn't frou-frou. It wasn't fussy. It was just, it kind of just had a kind of great stomping energy, which I really loved. Yeah. And I think it didn't take long for me to notice people really wearing it. The accessories, yes, but also the tailoring. And you would talk to women in the industry, and they really expressed how real it was and reliable it was for their every day, which makes me think of something else you said in 2016, Sarah. You said, to really start inhabiting our lives and minds, design needs to be at something more than churning out a house style or rearranging its signatures.

4:19And you said Christian Dior is a house in need of that, and you thought she was up to the task. So are there other ways that she impressed you over this nine year span? Well, I mean, I think also it was the her exploration of feminist artists and writers. But when I when I first met her, actually, it's really interesting because I met her at Valentino and remember when she and Pier Paolo Piccioli started there. They barely spoke any English. And so they both really studied very, very rapidly and I think wanted to expand their cultural references and meet people. They were both very eager to research and study and to bring more to the world of fashion.

5:01And Maria Grazias settled on exploring feminism, which was very interesting because Rakeli, her daughter, was at that point at Goldsmiths, the university in London, and was studying history of art. And I always got the impression they were kind of co-studying. And then when she brought, you know, she brought in so many writers, you know, the We Should All Be Feminist t-shirts, t-shirt for a start, in every single collection since then, but also kind of in this matrix where they would cross -reference that with something from the really extensive Christine Dior archive. So everything became sort of a study.

5:41You always kind of did learn something. I learned a lot from that kind of cultural background that she was bringing to the fore. We should talk about the Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie t-shirt, the We Should All Be Feminists. This was September, October 2016, which we can all remember what we were going through then. And it felt like a time where fashion was really engaging with social issues and political issues. It was a new thing to see something like that on the runway, don't you think? I have to say yes, because we'd also seen that collection in what, October, September, October 2016. Then we had an election, a very bruising, brutal election cycle through with Trump and Hillary Clinton.

6:29And I think it was uppermost in our minds. I mean, the whole way that the narrative around women and women in public office, but women generally, I think, had been very much to the fore of that election and continues to be at the forefront of, I think, so much of what we're thinking about and talking about. But to Sarah's point, I mean, what I thought was great was that to use what seems to be increasingly an old-fashioned and somewhat out of favor term. I mean, Maria Grazia used her platform and kudos to her for doing it because you're right, Sarah. I think she really shone a spotlight on people she loved, admired, different generations, different backgrounds, different cultural practitioners.

7:08So I think Maria Grazia constantly just made us all kind of think and not just accept the way the system was and the way the world is. And I, you know, personally, I think that was a kind of wonderful thing that she did. I was so charmed by a resort show she did in Los Angeles, and it was the collection when she pulled the tarot card images from this 40-year-old deck. It's called the Mother Peace Deck. It was, at the time it came out in the late 70s, early 80s, really revolutionary because all of the figures in the deck were female, were women. And it was a deck created by two women. And so arcane, except that I had used that tarot deck with my friends in college.

7:51So it was such a fun full circle moment. What card did you pull, Nicole? I have the deck. I should have brought it with us. We all could have pulled the card. Maybe we should do some live tarot reading on the podcast. That would be great. But of course, that did tie back into Christian Dior's superstitiousness. And he used that during the war. I mean, yeah, and she brought up Catherine Dior. Yes, sister. Sister, which Miss Dior had always sounded very, you know, light and frou-frou and everything. But it turned out that she was not only a resistance fighter, she ended up in Ravensbrück concentration camp during the war.

8:31A woman's concentration camp. So shocking. And Christian Dior had been casting, whatever you call it, tarot cards, reading tarot cards at that time to sort of praying, I suppose, that she would come back. And Maria Grazia told me that when a woman is inspired by women, it's a different is a different thing. It was very always very deep and very kind of personal in her when she talked about what she felt about women that she was researching, women in the theater from the past. And there was always kind of some kind of contemporary resonance there as well. I know, Sarah, that you were really impressed.

9:07You went to the show in India, right? And Maria Grazia worked very closely with the... Yeah, Chinacca. Right, an atelier of local artisans there. And that was something that another practice that she repeated. She would, it wasn't these destination shows. It wasn't a surface thing. She really went deep. And it was impressive to see the work that came out of those collections. Yeah, but one of the things which was very real about Maria Grazia, sort of going back a step back from that, is that she always kind of called herself a factory person. So she would always, I mean, go to every length to go to see things being made and talk to the people who are the craftspeople who are making them.

9:52And the other thing that the Indian, amazing Indian trip kind of revealed was that the embroidery, which happens in India, is of the very, very highest level. and there's an attached school where they were drawing in women who couldn't work for themselves and couldn't have an income and was really, really seriously supporting that. And at the couture shows always, at the Musée Rodin, there was always a Dior box of the runway which during the couture shows has always been, in her tenure, was always covered with these incredible, massive mural embroideries by these women and artisans made according to the theme that the artists that she was drawing on as well.

10:40So, I mean, and I heard from, she did that amazing show in Greece. Do you remember? It was at the original Olympic Stadium. And she had gone, I've got friends in Greece, and they said that she went to far north of Greece to a very remote area to the silk weaving factory to work with the specialist weaver there to produce all of the kind of drapery that she showed there. And there was another one which I loved, which was the show in Seville, where she'd been to, you know, the people who make sombreros and, you know, all kinds of embroideries and stuff. And it was always, she always went there personally.

11:18I don't know how she found time, but I think that's what she really, really enjoyed. I think being an Italian and coming from, you know, Valentino Couture, her appreciation and knowledge of how things are made and how they can be manipulated and so on. And she brought that to the fore. And I think it was a time, I mean, if we look back 10 years, it actually is a time when craft, you know, craft used to be a sort of clunky, you know, made at home, sort of looked down upon kind of term. And she was part of that massive revaluation as, you know, Jonathan Anderson was at Loewe. So I think you can kind of see that, you can see that going on.

11:55And it's not as if, you know, sometimes, you know, fashion can seem so remote and so seamless and so, you know, not crediting people who are behind the scenes and who actually make things. I think her respect for craft has been really impressive. You saw some of that firsthand when you were in Scotland for the resort show. I did. Scotland and then also Mexico City. Did you also go to the show in Morocco? And the one in Morocco as well. But I think, you know, to Sarah's point, it's absolutely true. I think she, I think what I always admired about Maria Grazia was that she exalted the craft and she exalted the manufacturing of textiles locally or the artisanal work that would be done locally, be in Scotland or Mexico or Greece or wherever.

12:42and put it on a kind of pedestal at the same height as couture in France. It was this idea that, no, you know, there's not some kind of pyramid thing where, you know, a couture house sits at the very pinnacle in the top. And, you know, I think she really kind of wanted to embrace the beauty of making and very often the beauty of making by communities of women around the world as part of her expression of Dior and her vision of Dior. And I also thought that was really commendable. And it was, to your point, sir, yes, it was really like, I mean, she's like an anthropologist. I mean, she really went into the field and really studied and worked and conversed and spent time.

13:19And it wasn't a disconnected experience. It wasn't an experience in this, for the sake of branding or some kind of easily digestible little narrative you could spin around a collection. I think it really came from the kind of the heart and the mind of her. And she really kind of, I think, very authentically and genuinely engaged with it and got a lot out of it. In some ways, for me, some of those shows where she would visit part of the world and work and present a collection were some of her best, I think. Yeah, I agree with that. And I think you kind of look at her personal style as well. I mean, it was always a pair of jeans and a black sweater.

14:00and her cropped hair, which was sometimes, you know, bottle blonde in a kind of punk way and always flats. She was not one for grandeur. You know, I think that very grounded, worker-like attitude was something very different from what we're used to from many creative directors.

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15:06The story that feels like it's emerging is how, like, 360 her approach was. Because, of course, while she was very attuned to craft and the detail at the fabric and the hand level, she also was beloved by celebrities who wore her sort of magical fairy dresses on the red carpet. right? And then she turned Dior. I mean, the Dior has had phenomenal commercial success while she's been there. I will say I remember talking to a very renowned skin doctor here in New York who said that every single woman that was coming into her for treatment was wearing Dior because I think she gave a uniform to women that was felt cool, effortless, understandable, quirky, clever interesting and it made sense to them you know it kind of boiled down to like we're saying earlier like the bar jacket or an embroidered sweater or a skirt or just something that in the flat comfortable practical boot not a kind of five inch heel tottering about the streets of manhattan so i think that's probably why for celebrities walking the red carpet it kind of made sense to them too because it acknowledged them and it acknowledged who they were in the clothes as opposed to just being dolled up in some frou-frou fantasy.

16:29I mean, definitely Dior has plenty of hallmarks or signatures, but even before her arrival, but she, as she's leaving, I can think of a lot that were uniquely hers, right? Like the tapestry bag that has the Dior logo on the side. Yeah, the book bag, yeah. I mean, that is, we see knockoffs of those on Canal Street by the dozen. I mean, that's - The ultimate accolade. The ultimate accolade. And the slingback shoes with the grosgrain ribbon said Dior on it. She very quickly invented a language, I think, of clothing and made that clothing resonate with kind of meaning and purpose and relevance. Yeah, and it was called a book bag.

17:14We should be reading. We should all be feminists who are reading, yes. Yes. Are there any other signatures of hers that stand out? I just think it was more the combination that you could imagine wearing a bar jacket with a pair of jeans. I mean, it was just, you know, a way of kind of deconstructing the suit. Although they were very good suits. I really liked it when she did collections where they were just, it was just really based on silhouette. Almost a 50s silhouette, but quite severe, but feminine. I thought they were really, really good, those moments. And also, you know, on the flip side, the kind of diaphanous tulle skirts, which you could see through, that was very much a signature of hers, you know, possibly with a more casual jacket.

18:04I don't know. You could see that. That is a very Maria Grazia kind of knack. And the other thing that comes to mind now is how often she would talk about the peplos, right, which is this ancient Greek garment, sort of like a toga, just really sort of wrapped around. And she was thinking about that garment, that easy to wear garment last year at couture time when she was riffing on the Olympics. The Olympics were headed to Paris. And I loved that couture show because it was couture, but in jerseys, it felt like. And so deluxe and rich, but also really easy to wear. And I think that that's part of what she was good at and what you were just saying, Sarah, that there is a sense of how women want to wear things in the real world.

18:59Yeah, even with couture, it was never just going to be some kind of fairytale fantasy that if you were going to work at that highest level, that therefore the clothes also had to function to some degree as well. It wasn't just a dress up box kind of situation. I have to say that was one of my favorite things. Actually, you know, it was always a pleasure to go and have a preview with Maria Grazia because you really felt engaged. And she would kind of challenge me, us, to think as well, I think, a little broader and a little deeper about things. Or maybe I should just speak for myself here. She challenged me to think a little broader and deeper.

19:37And I love my conversations with her. I love talking to Scotland about her. You know, I'm from Scotland, and I love the way she kind of embraced the whole narrative and kind of the myth and the reality of Scotland, maybe not the train spotting Scotland, but certainly the kind of historic idea of its kind of iconoclastic female figures. But it was also a chance just to see, as Sarah was saying, you were saying, Nicole, just how beautifully made, even the ready-to-wear collection was. I mean, those things were impeccably, impeccably, impeccably made and beautifully done. At a time when fashion, the speed of fashion sometimes feels like just show me the image and don't worry too much about how something's made

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21:01Do you have any reflections about the most recent show we saw in late February, early March? We were in Paris and I remember the very dramatic set with the bird flying across the ceiling, Sarah. And you said that it was wearable, wantable and practical every day out in the street things and that it was also the least Dior collection that she'd done. Yes well I mean go back to what you just said Mark seeing things in a preview at the Dior headquarters when she you know will pull a model towards you and show you you know how in the case of that collection there were ruffles which could be pinned on buttoned on in different ways and there were you know kind of raincoats and I think I remember a beautiful tailcoat all of those things were just amazing in the moment and there were some of my colleagues journalists who were sitting there and we were all going wow Yeah, this is really something kind of romantic, but very practical as well.

22:05And I didn't really see any bar jacket there or any of the references we've been seeing all along the way. I mean, maybe her mind was sort of flying off somewhere else, but it was a great collection. But sometimes when things get into sets and there are producers and there are lightings, and the lighting's kind of difficult. It's hard to see that, you know, from an audience point of view in the round or the square as it was. Yeah, sometimes we are very lucky to get that backstage access and see things up close or in the re-see afterwards is a way to appreciate clothes that sometimes the runway doesn't convey.

22:46I sadly didn't see that show, but it's funny, I was thinking how we started talking about that very first show. And the one thing I do remember, that very first show of Muriel Grazias was also how she acknowledged so many of the previous, albeit male, creators of, and it was a kind of generosity of spirit that, frankly, I think if a guy had been taking over the house, might not have done. But I love the way that she referenced Dior, she referenced Saint Laurent, she referenced Marc Bohan, who'd been at the house after Saint Laurent. She referenced Jean-Franco Ferré. Jean-Franco Ferré. You know, he's kind of somewhat forgotten from the history of Dior.

23:22And I think she'd also referenced Hedy Sloman, I think, with the B from The Men's Wear. So I just thought that is an inclusive, thoughtful, generous debut at a house, you know, to acknowledge the history and then say, but I'm going to put my own spin in it. And this is the way things are going to be from now on. And that kind of decisiveness and the deliberateness of that debut to me is it lives on in my mind. Yeah, you also have to think that the sheer numbers of collections and shows that she did, the relentlessness of that. I mean, she has incredible stamina. It was never like she was blasé or exhausted.

24:02She was always very enthusiastic to talk about all of these discoveries and make us get a sense of the reality of the people making things and how it had all come together. I think she just really enjoyed studying. you know the discovery in so many dimensions that was you know was partly as you say the kind of expansive exploration of the Dior archive I mean the Dior archive is something I think it's only been quite recently constructed within Dior but it is it is like a museum there is a museum attached to it at the side of the of the maison which is incredibly popular and I just think that you know within the house there was this kind of sense of bringing the past alive I think all those those dimensions were you know have been really interesting and I think she's you know she's grown as a person I love her you know that attitude of being curious and really professional really relentless and also being a family woman I mean you know her daughter Raquelia was always around and I think there were some quotes of hers at the beginning where, you know, she said it was, you know, a very big decision to leave Italy and to live in Paris.

25:15And she said at the point where she began, she was leaving her husband alone at home with her son. I guess the son was more of a, you know, a school kid at that point. I like the fact she was very frank about that because, you know, there's such pressure on women to cover up, to cover up being a mother, to work out how, you know, what sort of sacrifices you're going to make or how you're just going to organize it. And she did talk about those things, you know, at the beginning. Right. There's this idea that, yes, you're managing it all, but you don't have to discuss it. It's impolite to discuss it or something.

25:52So on that topic, sort of, I'm wondering if you think that there is an appetite for creative directors moving forward. We're about to experience a very big shift, not just at Dior, but at many houses across Milan and Paris. Do you think there's an appetite for creative directors to take on social issues and face them head on? I hope so. I'd like to think so, personally. I mean, I think it's, you've got to be rooted in the world and all the challenges and also the beauty of the world but if it's just I mean sometimes great fashion is great fashion of course it takes you somewhere else you know the quote-unquote dream or whatever else but I personally I'm always really engaged by designers who are not going to shy away from just really addressing the realities of the world and where we are today and and adding kind of I don't know a sense of that into their work and the way that they present the work well that remains to be seen, doesn't it?

26:53Because it's a time when artists of all kinds, all stripes, all disciplines are more and more afraid to be frank. That is very true, Sarah. And academics as well, university students, everybody being cautioned. At least, yeah, that's true. So we'll see. What's interesting, if you look at the sort of landscape now, you have Mathieu Blasier at Chanel, who's a young man who's very, very creative, avant-garde even and you've got Jonathan Anderson taking over at as we know so far Dior and Demna being moved to Gucci there's three three big guns facing each other and the competition that you know the field that they've always been competing on is a creative one it's a high level creative is.

27:47They're not people who anybody wants to follow a straight and narrow. You want those people to tell us something. So, I mean, that's my hope. What do you think is next for Maria Grazia? If you were, you know, what's the word called? Dream boarding with her? What could you imagine her doing next? Pull a tarot card and perhaps find out. I mean, well, I hope she keeps working. I hope, you know, that she continues to create and to be engaged. I mean, that's a very kind of prosaic way of putting it. But I think her presence at Dior was so important and her presence in fashion has been so important that fashion was more interesting with her around.

28:33So I hope she sticks around and someone continues to, you know, give her the platform to do what she wants to do and what needs to do. For Maria Grazia, I don't know. Yes, I want to see a strong woman continuing to be strong in the field of fashion. We haven't got enough. We need more appointments of women. All women bring different things to the table and there aren't enough at the moment. So, yeah, more power to Maria Grazia. Let's hope she does that somewhere where she'll be really happy. Yes. And not have to work every single day of her life. Hear, hear. Thank you both so much for joining me on The Run-Through.

29:16Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Pleasure.